


att Ke! 
At 





























Wale, wey 
eSipA 
i 








fi 
% 
+ 


© Ge ae 


ee 





BY HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 


EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
MAMMALIAN MOLAR TEETH 

AGE OF MAMMALS 

THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 
HUXLEY AND EDUCATION 

NEW ORDER OF SAINTHOOD 

FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


EVOLUTION AND 
RELIGION IN EDUCATION 


VOLUME III OF COLLECTED ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS 





F PRINGESN 
<n Vig eed DD 
NOV 10 1926 | 
By, © 
“OLogiony sew 


“OLUTION AND 
RELIGION IN EDUCATION 


POLEMICS OF THE 
FUNDAMENTALIST CONTROVERSY OF 1922 TO 1926 









BY fy 
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 


LL.D., TRIN., PRINC., COLUMB.; 8C.D., PRINCETON; HON. 
SC.D., CAMB.; HON, D.SC., YALE; HON. D.SC., OXFORD; 
HON. PH.D., CHRISTIANIA (OSLO); FOR. MEMB. RB. 8. 





RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
SENIOR GEOLOGIST, U. 8. GEOL. SURVEY 


PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK ~» LONDON 
1926 


CopyricHtT, 1925, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, 1926, By THE FORUM PUBLISHING COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, 1925, 1926, BY THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY SCIENCE PRESS 
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE CHRISTIAN WORLD, INC. 


Printed in the United States of America 





TO 


JOHN THOMAS SCOPES 
AND 


OTHER COURAGEOUS TEACHERS 
OF THE UNITED STATES 


WHO ELECT TO FACE SQUARELY THE ISSUE THAT 
THE YOUTH OF AMERICA SHOULD BE 
FREELY TAUGHT THE TRUTH OF EVOLUTION AND THE FACT 
THAT THIS GREAT LAW OF LIVING NATURE IS 
CONSISTENT WITH THE HIGHEST IDEALS 
OF RELIGION AND CONDUCT 


as rites 
rea 


10 


6 eink iy 


hit 1 


nels 


> , i 7 ay fs . ye q) v3 
sheds PV me Hast? Ft 


+= “uf ee 
fever Fy 





PREFACE 


I chiefly owe to my illustrious teacher, 
Thomas Henry Huxley, the conviction that 
devotion to pure scientific research and fellow- 
ship with the scientific fraternity do not re- 
lease one from his duty to his less fortunate 
fellow-men and to the community in which he 
lives. I also share Huxley’s feeling that it is 
one of the duties and privileges of citizenship 
to contribute what we can from our own gen- 
eral field of research to the scientific enlighten- 
ment of our day and generation. 

The present volume includes a series of ad- 
dresses, some of which were dictated very 
rapidly to meet emergencies and were pub- 
lished in the controversial columns of the 
New York Times and the Forum, others hav- 
ing been delivered on the spur of the moment, 
in many instances extemporaneously, to col- 
lege and university students and teachers, and 
taken down in shorthand. Consequently, the 
style is not that of the deliberate and finished 


1x 


Xx PREFACE 


essay but, rather, that of the spontaneous ex- 
pression of convictions drawn from lifelong 
experience and knowledge and voiced in the 
language familiar to one’s audience. My audi- 
ences were mostly student assemblies at Co- 
lumbia and Cornell Universities, teachers’ 
conventions, and the National Republican 
Club. 

To this volume is added a bibliography of 
the addresses and essays of the chief partici- 
pants, on both sides, in the famous evolution 
and religion controversy of 1922-26. 

HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN. 


Co.umBi1A UNIVERSITY, 
June 1, 1926. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I. Crosstinc SwoRDS WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL- 
ISsTS . 


Evolution in court — Cromwell and Darwin — Restoration 
and revival — Milton, Paley, and Darwin — Nature and the 
naturalists — Religion and the naturalist — Spiritual versus 
mechanistic forces. 


AE RVOLUTIONGAND IELIGION. Ce 


Bryan’s sincerity — The attitude of Kingsley and of Mc- 
Cosh — Evolution a firmly established truth — Augustine 
leaves Nature to the naturalists — Augustine’s modern theistic 
conception of evolution — Convincing evidence of human 
evolution. 


II. Evoxuution anp Datnuy Living... . 


The fundamentalists attack evolutionists as atheists — The 
creed of evolution — A new definition of evolution — The grad- 
ual emergence of man’s higher powers — Redeeming the reputa- 
tion of the cave man — The triumph of observation and failure 
of speculation — The naturalist replaces the materialist — Hux- 
ley’s reverence for the Bible — Evolution and morals — The 
press the most potent influence on daily life — Conduct and the 
future of our race. 


IV. Tur Crepo or A NATURALIST 


The philosophy and psychology of 1876 and of 1926 — 
Our psychologists lose the soul — Brain physiology replaces the 
older psychology — Physicists rediscover the soul and the 
spiritual nature of man — Rudolf Eucken and Walter Rathe- 
nau in contrast with Dewey — Harnack and Huxley’s pupil 
Morgan — “‘Creative” and “emergent” evolution — Physiol- 
ogists Martin and Haldane on Conduct — The failure of pure 
mechanism — Wordsworth expresses our credo. 

xi 


PAGE 


25 


43 


69 


xii CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
V. Tue Earts Speaks To BRYAN ...... 


Bryan does not fulfil his pledge — The Tennessee trial a new 
inquisition — The enlightened words of Dorlodot — The funda- 
mentalists and the modernists of 450 B. C., Auschylus and Job 
— The hieroglyphics of paleontology — Discovery of the 
Stone Age in central Asia — The homeland of an alert race — 
The prehistory of religion. 


VI. Tue TENNESSEE TRIAL 


Giordano Bruno and Galileo; the seventeenth and twentieth 
centuries — Bryan the real defendant, Scopes the real plaintiff 
— Distinction between educational liberty and license — Difi- 
cult for Bryan to unseat a well-established law of Nature — The 
testimony of the rocks — The travail of a million centuries — 
Man not the descendant of an ape — Our superior ancestry 
— The still small voice — The creative evolution of man. 


VII. Tue Cast ror Human Evouvution In 1925 


Bryan contra mundum — The testimony of anatomy, oldest 
of the sciences— The ape no longer in the line of human 
descent — Man in a very ancient family of his own — A long 
and honorable line of ascent — The recently discovered Fox- 
hall man — Prediction of the erect-walking position of the 
Tertiary Dawn Man — Summary of our knowledge of the fossil 
races of man — Probable Asiatic centre of origin and dispersal 
of the human race. 


VIll. How to Tracu Evolution IN THE 
ScHOOLS 


Need of well-trained teachers — The author’s fiftieth anni- 
versary as a teacher — Meaning of the word “evolution”? — 
Distinction between opinion and fact — The natural gradation 
in teaching evolution — The inspiration of the object — The 
modern opportunities of Nature-study — The beginnings of 
evolutionary teaching. 


IX. How To Restore RELIGION To THE SCHOOLS 


A simplified religion and a reverent science — Religion or Sci- 
ence alone fails — The scientific experiment in Russia — The 


PAGE 


113 


133 


153 


175 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

teaching of the universal elements of religion — The respective 
gifts of the Hebrews and of the Christians — The historic 
elements of religion — Governors of morals in the daily press 
— Power of the headliner. 


X. Convincinc EvIDENCE OF THE GEOLOGIC 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN ..... 


Man on the earth 500,000 years — 130 years of research — 
Significant bits of fossil evidence — Reluctant acceptance of 
new facts — No conspiracy of science — Man a family indepen- 
dent of the apes— Scholarship of the French clergy — Dis- 
persal and branching of the human family — We cannot excom- 
municate our ancestors. 


XI. A New Basis or CREATIVE Evouurion . 


The known and the unknown in human evolution — Crea- 
tive’ evolution a recent discovery — The Lamarck-Spencer 
theory of the origin of mind abandoned — Creative origin of 
mental and spiritual traits — Application of Weismann’s inter- 
pretation of Natural Selection — New traits arising in reaction 
to racial environment — Hypothesis of coincident selection — 
Creative origin of musical and artistic talent. 


187 


213 


PARR CY te Ve oa gs ge clo es. 6) el ar leahg hua ame & Boe 


INDEX . ° ° e ° ° e e oo e@ e@ ii oe eee a Se ee lk ek 





ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


EVOLUTION AND RELIGION was published in the New York 
Times of March 5, 1922, in reply to an article by William 
Jennings Bryan; the Times also featured THe CasE FOR 
Human Evo ution In 1925, in its issue of July 12, 1925, and 
A New Basis or CREATIVE EvoLurIon in its issue of April 
18, 1926. Four of the chapters appeared in the Forum, as fol- 
lows: EvotutTion AND Datty Livine, February, 1925; Tur 
Crepo or A Naturauist, April, 1925; Tur Eartu Speaks To 
Bryan, June, 1925; Convincina EVIDENCE OF THE GEOLOGIC 
Antiquity or Man, June, 1926. The first three of these, with 
the addition of Chapters II and VI, were hurriedly brought 
out in book form as Tur Eartu Speaks To BRYAN by Charles 
Scribner’s Sons in June, 1925, in connection with the Tennes- 
see evolution case. Chapter VIII, How to Tracu Evouv- 
TION IN THE SCHOOLS, was an address before the Science Sec- 
tion of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of 
the Middle States and Maryland, at Columbia University, on 
November 28, 1925, and was printed in School and Society, 
January 9, 1926; in its present form the address was delivered 
to the Schoolmasters’ Association of New York and Vicinity 
on March 19, 1926, at the Harvard Club, and was printed by 
them for distribution to their entire membership. Chapter IX 
was published in Christian Work, February 27, 1926. 





I 


CROSSING SWORDS WITH THE 
FUNDAMENTALISTS 


The present volume, which comprises the cycle of the 
three years’ disputation, 1922-1925, with Bryan and other 
fundamentalists, may be introduced by reciting a few of the 
events which led to the writing of this series of polemic 
articles, by sketches of the personalities and motives in- 
volved, by a few contrasts between our notions of revolution 
and of evolution, and, finally, by the meaning a naturalist 
may attach to the words “‘evolution” and “religion.” 


CROSSING SWORDS WITH THE 
FUNDAMENTALISTS 


Evolution in court — Cromwell and Darwin — Restoration 
and revival — Milton, Paley, and Darwin — Nature and the 
naturalists — Religion and the naturalist — Spiritual versus 
mechanistic forces. 


ARLY in the year 1922 I was suddenly 
aroused from my reposeful researches in 
paleontology by an article in the New York 
Times of February 26, by William Jennings 
Bryan, entitled ““God and Evolution.” The 
force of the article lay in his clever citation of 
the wide differences of opinion existing among 
evolutionists as to the causes of evolution, and 
especially his citation of the hopeless attitude 
of the distinguished Cambridge evolutionist, 
William Bateson, who had recently declared 
that we know nothing about the causes of the 
origin of species, although our faith in evo- 
lution is unshaken. It struck me immediately 
that Bryan’s article was far more able and 
convincing than any previous utterance of his 


or of any other fundamentalist, and that there 
3 


4 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


should be not a moment’s delay in replying 
to it. 

Thus began a newspaper and magazine war, 
a running debate with my distinguished op- 
ponent and others, always conducted on both 
sides with absolute courtesy and good feeling. 
At the moment of the sudden and regrettable 
death of the Great Commoner I was pleased 
to recall that I had never said anything harsh 
of him in this controversy, and that his final 
attack on my supposed utter ignorance as to 
the evolution of man, published in the Forum 
in July, 1925, was good-natured from begin- 
ning to end. 


EVOLUTION IN COURT 


As the peak of our controversy, there oc- 
curred in 1925 the Scopes trial. If I have any 
inclination above all others it is for the truth- 
ful education of the youth of America. The 
fundamentalist movement had not previously 
given me a moment’s thought or concern, but 
when it began thus to interfere with the teach- 
ings in our schools and colleges, to deceive the 
youth of our country, our boys and girls, our 


IN EDUCATION a) 


young men and women in the formative stage, 
on whose right thinking and right conduct the 
whole future of America depends, I was thor- 
oughly aroused. Naturally a peace-loving 
man, in a question of truth I am prepared to 
fight to the limit. Perhaps I am like the 
Quaker who, confronted by a pirate attempt- 
ing to board~ his ship, gently remarked: 
“Friend, if thee do insist on boarding my 
ship I will run thee through the body with 
my pike.” Hence, I was among the first to 
take up the pike in the Dayton case, because 
the fundamentalists were trying to board my 
ship! I was immediately satisfied in my first 
brief interview with the young Tennessee 
teacher, John Thomas Scopes, and his propo- 
nent, Doctor George W. Rappelyea, that young 
Scopes risked his position because he was not 
willing to dissemble. A simple, natural, un- 
affected youth disclaiming any particular 
knowledge of biology or evolution, he never- 
theless was animated by a great educational 
principle and agreed with his courageous 
friend and adviser, Rappelyea, to bring the 
matter to a test. 


6 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Thus these two young Tennesseeans started 
a movement which vibrated around the entire 
world and which, it is interesting to know, be- 
came the subject of serious study and investi- 
gation by two of the learned academies of Eu- 
rope, as I learned from inquiries addressed to 
me from French and Italian academies of sci- 
ence. As soon as I was convinced of this sin- 
cerity I engaged in this struggle for truthful- 
ness in education with all my power. For a 
time I dropped everything else; I conferred 
with all the learned counsel—Judge John B. 
Neal, of Tennessee, Messrs. Bainbridge Colby 
and Dudley Field Malone, of New York, and 
Clarence Darrow, of Chicago; I helped the 
movement toward Dayton of the best bio- 
logical thought of America, and, although 
prevented myself from attending the trial, kept 
in close touch with the splendid body of biol- 
ogists and geologists who at great personal 
sacrifice went to Dayton and rendered a noble ~ 
service for education. I hurried into press 
a small volume of newspaper and magazine 
articles entitled “The Earth Speaks to Bryan,” 
on the real significance of the word “‘evolu- 


IN EDUCATION 7 


tion” in relation to “religion,” a volume which 
was presented to counsel on both sides in the 
famous Scopes case, also to the editors of all 
the newspapers of Tennessee. I also hurried 
to Dayton a thousand copies of my first reply 
to Bryan, and at the request of the New York 
Times I prepared within a few hours’ notice 
an article, ““Osborn States the Case for Evo- 
lution”? (Chapter VII of this volume), for 
their issue of July 12, 1925. 


CROMWELL AND DARWIN 


Revolution destroys the good with the bad. 
Evolution destroys the bad and favors the 
good. Revolution occurs again and again in 
the mind and heart of man. Evolution begins 
and ends the purposes of God. 

When Oliver Cromwell swept over England 
and Ireland, while attempting to replace the 
moral code of a decadent court and a hardly 
less decadent church, he destroyed much that 
was true and beautiful in the religion of Brit- 
ain. Thus it is with all revolutions: there is a 
latent anarchistic element—anarchy in the 
sense of the destruction of leadership, of con- 


8 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


ventions and manners, of codes and customs 
in all forms. It is true that out of the.Crom- 
wellian and Puritanic era in Britain there 
emerged a new and lofty code of conduct, 
new conceptions of the relation of man to 
God, and new or restored reliance on the 
Bible. 

The weakness of Puritanism was its lack 
of symmetry and proportion, its denial of the 
beauty and joy of living, its independence of 
Nature, its overreliance on a daily miracle- 
working God. Moreover, the literalism of 
Cromwell and of Puritanism extended into the 
naturalistic field of thought now comprised 
within our great sciences of Geology, Pale- 
ontology, and Biology. Spontaneous thought 
and observation in all these branches were 
fairly stifled with Biblical literalism. The 
Psalmist’s broad sweeping aspect of Nature. 
in all its grandeur, the immensity of geologic 
time, the wisdom of the stars and the parables 
taught in all forms of animal and plant life 
were forgotten in textual adherence to the 
first chapter of Genesis. In our scientific day 
it is almost inconceivable that even some of 


IN EDUCATION 9 


the great scientific minds of England, like 
those of Sedgwick in geology, of Buckland in 
palzontology, and of Owen in comparative 
anatomy, were obliged by this literalism to 
ignore discoveries in the prehistory of man, 
to become evasive and insincere, to crib, cabin, 
and confine their thought, to compress their 
whole conception of the earth’s history within 
the confines set by the books of Moses, and 
even by the chronology of Archbishop Ussher. 

Charles Darwin’s great revolution of 1859, 
brought about not by fire and the sword 
nor by a conquering army, but by obser- 
vant, Quaker-like, and peaceable methods of 
thought, was far more profound and far 
more extended than that of Oliver Cromwell. 
Whereas Cromwell subdued Britain, Darwin 
invaded the whole world of thought; he turned 
everything upside down; he destroyed hun- 
dreds of old conventions and traditions; he 
unseated the kings and princes of science and 
unfrocked the bishops and prelates of the- 
ology. In substituting the direct observation 
of Nature and the true inductive methods for 
the false deductive methods of reasoning, 


10 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Darwin also undermined much that was good 
and true and beautiful in the religious and 
spiritual side of life. There is no denying that 
Darwin and his disciples, in establishing Evo- 
lution as a great principle of Nature, also 
undermined the older foundations of relig- 
ious thought and action. Only a few prophets 
of the future like Charles Kingsley were sa- 
gacious enough to foresee the consequences 
which would inevitably ensue if theology ar- 
rayed itself against science, if religion arrayed 
itself against Nature. In the long run science 
/ was bound to win, because it had “‘the big 
- guns” of Nature on its side. 


RESTORATION AND REVIVAL 


Time softens all errors in the revolutions 
led by men; it enforces new truths and rein- 
forces the old truths temporarily hidden in 
the dust and clouds of battle. Our broaden- 
ing and deepening knowledge of Nature 
proves that every revolution by its very mo- 
mentum goes too far and ends in a restoration 
of the old reverence for moral and spiritual 
values. A long period of reaction is required 


IN EDUCATION 11 


before new and wholesome anti-revolutionary 
forces are sufficiently strong to restore normal 
equilibrium between what we know and what 
we do not know, and never shall know regard- 
ing Nature and the forces which lie beyond it 
—the finite and the infinite. 

It may be said that the entire world of 
thought and of conduct has gone through 
this long period of readjustment, and that 
there is in many minds and hearts a renais- 
sance of the older ideals, standards, and phi- 
losophies of life and of the older faiths, in new 
forms and semblances. This revival is touched 
upon in the fourth of these essays, “The 
Credo of a Naturalist,’ in which it is shown 
that the new movement is not seeking a re- 
turn to the old moorings but is steering a 
course entirely its own, in which the truths 
of Nature no longer conflict with the impulses 
of religion. 

Possibly because of profound religious emo- 
tions aroused by the World War, this reac- 
tionary spiritual movement among scientific 
men was coincident in time with the revival 
of literalism among those leaders of religious 


12 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


thought who in this country are known as 
fundamentalists. Both in its origin and in its 
purposes, the movement among scientific men 
toward more spiritual conceptions was as re- 
mote as possible from that of the fundamen- 
talists. It sought to create a religious attitude 
toward Nature and toward God not inconsis- 
tent with our reason or with the teachings of 
Nature. The fundamentalist movement, on 
the other hand, sought to re-establish the Bib- 
lical literalism of the time of Cromwell, Mil- 
ton, and the Puritans which had been totally 
routed during the nineteenth century. 


MILTON, PALEY, AND DARWIN 


The crucial alternative was whether man 
with all his attributes was created gradually 
or instantaneously; neither alternative was in- 
consistent with Design. In his “ Natural The- 
ology,” William Paley (1743-1805), English 
divine and philosopher, adapted with consum- 
mate skill the argument for the Special Crea- 
tion of man which the zoologists and natural 
philosophers Ray (1691), Derham (1711), and 
Nieuwentyt (1730) had already made familiar: 


IN EDUCATION 13 


“For my part, I take my stand in human anato- 
my’ and insist upon “‘the necessity, in each 
particular case, of an intelligent designing mind 
for the contrwing and determining of the forms 
which organised bodies bear.’’! [Italics my own.] 

It has long been taken for granted by both 
naturalists and natural philosophers like Wil- 
liam James that Darwin’s Natural Selection 
deprived Paley’s argument of its force, but 
in the final chapter of the present volume, 
“A New Basis of Creative Evolution,” it is 
pointed out that William Paley’s argument 
for Design is no less forceful than it was in 
1802, although we must substitute the design 
of creative evolution for that of instantane- 
ous creation. It is interesting to note that 
Paley in his day was regarded as a latitudi- 
narian or modernist and that his immortal 
work, popularly known as Paley’s “Evi- 
‘ dences,” was written in the hope of restor- 
ing his regular standing in the Church. 


We may not attempt to define either of the 
words “evolution” or “religion,” which are 


1“Natural Theology,” William Paley. Citation’ from “‘Encyclo- 
peedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition,” vol. XX, p. 629. 


14 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


used today in a hundred different senses; we 
may use them only as they come within the 
vision of a naturalist. In the vision of a natu- 
ralist and of a lifelong student of prehistoric 
man from his most remote beginnings and of 
uncivilized man as we may still observe him in 
many parts of the world today, the idea of 
religion is something quite different from the 
idea bred in the mind of the fundamentalist, 
who still regards man as a perfectly finished 
product instantaneously created on the sixth 
day in the image of God, as nobly phrased by 
Milton: 
... The Fiend 
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind 
Of living creatures, new to sight and strange. 
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 
God-like erect, with native honour clad 
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all, 
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine 
The image of their glorious Maker shone, 
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure— 
Severe, but in true filial freedom placed, 
Whence true authority in men: though both 
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed; 
For contemplation he and valour formed, 
For softness she and sweet attractive grace; 
He for God only, she for God in him.! 
1“ Paradise Lost,” John Milton, Everyman’s Library, p. 80. 


IN EDUCATION 15 


In the mind of the naturalist religion, as 
distinguished from theology, is subjective; it 
is the soul and spirit of man in relation to 
Nature and to God. As distinguished from 
ethics, religion guides the impulses to human 
conduct in harmony with the character and 
will of God and with the laws of Nature. In 
this sense reverence for Nature is in harmony 
with reverence for God. In this sense also we 
may read the Psalms in much the same spirit 
in which we may read the Nature aphorisms 
of Goethe, 1783, as expressed in the English 
of Huxley, 1869." 


NATURE AND THE NATURALISTS 


Nature, in the language of Goethe, has the 
same all-embracing power and infinite per- 
sonality as is attributed to God in the lan- 
guage of the Psalms. In brief, we might place 
side by side certain of the aphorisms of Goethe 
and certain of the Psalms. 

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her: 
powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to- 


penetrate beyond her. 
She is ever shaping new forms: what is, has never yet 


1“Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe,” T. H. Huxley, Nature, Novem- 
ber 4, 1869. 


16 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


been; what has been, comes not again. Everything is new, 
and yet nought but the old. 

Her life is in her children; but where is the mother? 
She is the only artist; working-up the most uniform mate- 
rial into utter opposites; arriving, without a trace of effort, 
at perfection, at the most exact precision, though always 
veiled under a certain softness. 

Incessant life, development, and movement are in her, 
but she advances not. She changes for ever and ever, and 
rests not a moment. Quietude is inconceivable to her, and 
she has laid her curse upon rest. She is firm. Her steps 
are measured, her exceptions rare, her laws unchangeable. 

She has always thought and always thinks; though not 
as a man, but as Nature. She broods over an all-compre- 
hending idea, which no searching can find out. 

Mankind dwell in her and she in them. With all men 
she plays a game for love, and rejoices the more they win. 
With many, her moves are so hidden, that the game is 
over before they know it. 

She wraps man in darkness, and makes him for ever long 
for light. She creates him dependent upon the earth, dull 
and heavy; and yet is always shaking him until he attempts 
to soar above it. 

We obey her laws even when we rebel against them; we 
work with her even when we desire to work against her. 

She has neither language nor discourse; but she creates 
tongues and hearts, by which she feels and speaks. 

She is an eternal present. Past and future are unknown 
to her. The present is her eternity. She is beneficent. I 
praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. 


Goethe’s aphorisms may be compared line 
for line with certain verses in the Book of Job. 
The poet Goethe, like the poet-author of the 
Book of Job, is unable to avoid the sense of an 


IN EDUCATION 17 


omnipresent and beneficent Design in Nature, 
that of an infinite Personality. 

From the naturalist’s standpoint also, re- 
ligion is embraced in evolution as a universally 
dominant element in the ascending moral and 
spiritual progress of man. As Schleiermacher, 
Pascal, and Paley conceived religion, it springs 
first of all from a sense of dependence, of 
powerlessness in our contest with the forces of 
Nature. William James observes that “the 
religious phenomenon has shown itself to con- 
sist everywhere, and in all its stages, in the 
consciousness which individuals have of an 
intercourse between themselves and higher 
powers with which they feel themselves to be 
related. This intercourse is realized at the 
time as being both active and mutual... . 
The gods believed in—whether by crude sav- 
ages or by men disciplined intellectually— 
agree with each in recognizing personal calls. 

To coerce the spiritual powers, or to 
square them and get them on our side, was, 
during enormous tracts of time, the one great 
object in our dealings with the natural world.’”! 


2 “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James. 


18 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


RELIGION AND THE NATURALIST 


It follows that the naturalist may regard 
religion from this detached and dispassionate 
point of view as an essential and ennobling 
element in the rise of man, as an element with- 
out which man ceases to be man and becomes 
an automaton or a mere mechanism. Conse- 
quently, on purely scientific grounds we may 
set forth the religious and spiritual life of man 
as part of the great upward movement of crea- 
tive evolution. 

A philosophic expression of the relation be- 
tween science and religion is to be found in 
the Lowell Lectures of 1925, by Alfred North 
Whitehead, Fellow of Trinity College in the 
University of Cambridge and Professor of 
Philosophy in Harvard University:' 

. . . science is concerned with the general con- 
ditions which are observed to regulate physical 
phenomena; whereas religion is wholly wrapped 
up in the contemplation of moral and esthetic 
values. On the one side there is the law of gravi- 


tation, and on the other the contemplation of 
the beauty of holiness. ... 


1 “Science and the Modern World,” Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 
260, 262, 265, 270, 273, 275, and 276. 


IN EDUCATION 19 


When we consider what religion is for man- 
kind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to 
say that the future course of history depends upon 
the decision of this generation as to the relations 
between them... . 

Science is even more changeable than theology. 
No man of science could subscribe without quali- 
fication to Galileo’s beliefs, or to Newton’s beliefs, 
or to all his own scientific beliefs of ten years ago. 

Religion will not regain its old power until it 
can face change in the same spirit as does science. 
Its principles may be eternal, but the expression 
of those principles requires continual develop- 
IMENT aes 

So far, my point has been this: that religion is 
the expression of one type of fundamental ex- 
periences of mankind: that religious thought de- 
velops into an increasing accuracy of expression, 
disengaged from adventitious imagery: that the 
interaction between religion and science is one 
great factor in promoting this development. 

. . . I must now state, in all diffidence, what I 
conceive to be the essential character of the re- 
ligious spirit. Religion is the vision of something 
which stands beyond, behind, and within, the 
passing flux of immediate things; something which 
is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something 
which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest 
of present facts; something that gives meaning to 
all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; 
something whose possession is the final good, and 


20 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


yet is beyond all reach; something which is the 
ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest. ... Re- 
ligion has emerged into human experience mixed 
with the crudest fancies of barbaric imagination. 
Gradually, slowly, steadily the vision recurs in 
history under nobler form and with clearer ex- 
pression. 

. . . The power of God is the worship He in- 
spires. That religion is strong which in its ritual 
and its modes of thought evokes an apprehension 
of the commanding vision. The worship of God 
is not a rule of safety—it is an adventure of the 
spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death 
of religion comes with the repression of the high 
hope of adventure. 


SPIRITUAL VERSUS MECHANISTIC FORCES 


A patriotic national plea for the revival of 
spiritual forces in the modern mechanistic life 
of Germany is that of Walter Rathenau 
quoted in the chapter, “The Credo of a Nat- 
uralist.”” A characteristically practical and no 
less patriotic plea is that of our own Presi- 
dent, Calvin Coolidge, in his address at the 
Annual Convention of the American Red 
Cross in Washington, September 24, 1923: 


A contemplation of these principles and the 
works which they have wrought, both in our 


IN EDUCATION 21 


country and among the other nations, for this 
spirit is world-wide, is helpful and reassuring. 
They are among the convincing evidences that 
justify our faith in mankind. They reveal the 
fundamental strength of civilization. They dem- 
onstrate the supremacy of the spiritual life. 

Here we behold the race struggling up through 
barbarism, overcoming ignorance, establishing or- 
der, instituting government, painfully working 
out their own destiny under free institutions, ac- 
knowledging and accepting the truths of religion, 
gradually casting aside selfishness, endowing the 
great charities which heal the body, inform the 
mind, and minister to the soul, making on every 
hand unending sacrifices that the truth may be 
supreme. Such is the strength of the influence, 
of which this organization is one of the represen- 
tatives. It is inconceivable that it could have 
come thus far only to retreat, that it could have 
succeeded up to the present time only to fail.! 


In a subsequent address to the delegates of 
the Boy Scouts of America, Calvin Coolidge 
voiced the sentiments which also run through 
my addresses, ““How to Teach Evolution in 
the Schools” and “How to Restore Religion 
to the Schools.” His words are: 

There was no Boy Scout organization in my 


boyhood; but every boy who has the privilege of 
1“The Mind of the President,’ C. Bascom Slemp, pp. 257, 258. 


22 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


growing up on a farm learns instinctively the three 
fundamentals of scouthood. 

The first is a reverence for Nature. Boys should 
never lose their love of the fields and the streams, 
the mountains and the plains, the open places and 
the forests. That love will be a priceless posses- 
sion as your years lengthen out... . 

The second is a reverence for law. I remember 
the town meetings of my boyhood, when the citi- 
zens of our little town met to levy taxes on them- 
selves and to choose from their own number those 
who should be their officers. There is something 
in every such meeting, in every election, that ap- 
proaches very near to the sublime... . 

The third is a reverence for God. It is hard to 
see how a great man can be an atheist. Without 
the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power 
we could have little faith in ourselves. We need 
to feel that behind us are Intelligence and Love. 
[Italics my own.] ? 


The patriotism of Walter Rathenau and of 
Calvin Coolidge is of the same order as that 
which impelled me to cross swords with the 
fundamentalists, for from the beginning to the 
end of the three-year period of disputation my 
chief appeal is to the minds and hearts of the 
youth of America. 


1“The Mind of the President,” C. Bascom Slemp, pp. 302, 303. 


IN EDUCATION 23 


The penetrating reader will observe that 
these disputatious essays and addresses are in 
no way to be considered as an exposition or 
defense of evolution. Why seek to defend a 
well-established law of Nature? Rather, they 
constitute a defense of religion against the at- 
tacks of those who would make religion the 
consort of ignorance instead of learning. We 
may be fairly sure that we are on the right 
side of civilization and of human progress if 
we are on the spiritually constructive side, 
the side which alone attracts and inspires the 
rising generation. 





II 
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


William Jennings Bryan opened the controversy with an 
article, “‘God and Evolution,” of very great ability, in which 
he sought to convince his readers of his utmost readiness to 
accept the theory of human evolution if there were any sub- 
stantial proof of it. This apparently disingenuous attitude is 
summed up in his sentence which Osborn took as a text for 
the article opening this series and for a subsequent essay, 
“The Earth Speaks to Bryan,” where it is quoted in full. 


EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Bryan’s sincerity — The attitude of Kingsley and of Mc- 
Cosh — Evolution a firmly established truth — Augustine 
leaves Nature to the naturalists — Augustine’s modern the- 
istic conception of evolution — Convincing evidence of hu- 
man evolution. 


APPRECIATE the invitation of the New 

York Times to present the state of our 
knowledge today regarding Darwinism and 
the evolution of man, especially in relation to 
religion, the Bible, and the all-important ques- 
tion of the moral education of our youth. 
Thousands of good people throughout this 
country who love the Bible of their fathers 
and are full of religious faith have been deeply 
affected by the eloquent and sincere addresses 
which the Great Commoner has been deliver- 
ing. Large audiences have listened to him 
in all parts of the Union with deep interest, 
and on the members of the Kentucky legisla- 
ture he made so profound an impression that 
this body by only a very narrow vote missed 
the exclusion of evolutionary teaching in all 


the schools of the State. 
27 


28 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


BRYAN 'S SINCERITY 


As evidence of Mr. Bryan’s sincerity, I have 
purposely extracted the sentence which I con- 
sider the crux of his whole address, namely: 
“The real question is, Did God use evolution 
as His plan? If it could be shown that man, 
instead of being made in the image of God, is 
a development of beasts we would have to ac- 
cept it, regardless of its effect, for truth is 
truth and must prevail.” I interpret this sen- 
tence as meaning that he is open to conviction, 
even if convinced against his will. I am deeply 
impressed with the fact that he has familiar- 
ized himself with many of the debatable points 
in Darwin’s opinions, such as the theory of 
Sexual Selection, and it is not at all surprising, 
not being a specialist in biology, that he is ex- 
tremely confused—as, in fact, many evolu- 
tionists are—by the radical differences of opin- 
ion as to the power of Natural Selection itself 
expressed by recent writers such as John Bur- 
roughs and Professor Bateson. If it is difficult 
for biologists to think straight on this very 
intricate subject of evolution, how much more 


IN EDUCATION 29 


difficult must it be for the layman? I have 
elsewhere shown in a recent number of Sczence 
that Bateson is living the life of a scientific 
specialist, out of the main current of biolog- 
ical discovery, and that his opinion that we 
have failed to discover the origin of species is 
valueless and directly contrary to the truth. 
I have not yet had time to answer John Bur- 
roughs’s wholly misleading article on “ Natu- 
ral Selection,” but I would like to state posi- 
tively, as a result of twenty-one years of a 
single research for the United States Geo- 
logical Survey, that m my opinion Natural 
Selection is the only cause of evolution which 
has thus far been discovered and demon- 
strated. I believe there are many other causes 
which remain to be discovered. Mr. Bryan, 
who is an experienced politician, and who has 
known politicians to disagree, should not be 
surprised or misled when naturalists disagree 
in matters of opinion. No living naturalist, 
however, so far as I know, differs as to the 
immutable truth of evolution in the sense of 
the continuous fitness of plants and animals 
to their environment, and the ascent of all the 


30 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


extinct and existing forms of life, mcluding 
man, from an original and single cellular 
state. 

There are two aspects of Mr. Bryan’s ad- 
dress: One, religious and philosophical, on 
which I may first comment, the other, natu- 
ral, or coming within the field of direct ob- 
servation, namely, the origin of species and 
the origin of man. The former affects our re- 
ligious beliefs or ideas of God and His relation 
to Nature; the latter is simply a matter of di- 
rect observation of the testimony of the earth; 
the former will always be debatable and largely 
a matter of personal faith or of scepticism; the 
latter is a matter of the laboratory, of the field 
naturalist, of indefatigable digging in all parts 
of the world among the ancient archives of 
the earth’s history. If Mr. Bryan, with an 
open heart and mind, would drop all his books 
and all the disputations among the doctors 
and study first-hand the simple archives of 
Nature, all his doubts would disappear; he 
would not lose his religion; he would become 
an evolutionist. 


IN EDUCATION 31 


THE ATTITUDE OF KINGSLEY AND OF McCOSH 


“Truth is truth and must prevail”; these 
words of Bryan constitute the solid rock on 
which enduring religion and the only endur- 
ing knowledge of Nature rest, while the shift- 
ing sands of human opinion are swept hither 
and thither both in theology and in science. 
Wrecked on these sands of opinion are many 
great names, both in theology and in science, 
but fortunately there have lived some wise 
pilots of Nature who would have kept our 
thinking straight if we had heeded their coun- 
sel. I had the good fortune to fall under the 
influence of James McCosh, natural philoso- 
pher and divine, who in his lectures on “ Chris- 
tianity and Positivism’ accepted evolution, 
with most of its implications, in the year 
1876. 

Thirteen years earlier, in 1863, Charles 
Kingsley, whose religion no one has ever chal- 
lenged, struck the note of truth only four years 
after Darwin’s “Origin of Species” appeared, 
when he wrote to Frederick Maurice, one of 
the most profoundly religious men that Eng- 


32 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


land has produced: “Darwin is conquering 
everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by 
the mere force of truth and fact. The one or 
two who hold out [against Darwin] are forced 
to try all sorts of subterfuges as to fact, or 
else by evoking the odzwm theologicum.” In 
the same letter Kingsley says: “ The state of 
the scientific mind is most curious; . . . they 
find that now they have got rid of an inter- 
fering God—a master-magician, as I call it— 
they have to choose between the absolute em- 
pire of accident, and a living, immanent, ever- 
working God.”’ 

Kingsley describes himself as “busy work- 
ing out points of natural theology, by the 
strange light of Huxley, Darwin, and Lyell. 
I think I shall come to something worth hav- 
ing before I have done.” 


EVOLUTION A FIRMLY ESTABLISHED TRUTH 


Although in the van of the religious thinkers 
of his time, Kingsley was not in a position to 
answer Mr. Bryan’s main question: “Did 
God use evolution as His plan?” Evolution 


IN EDUCATION 33 


in 1863 rested on the indirect or circumstan- 
tial evidence presented by Darwin, while in 
1922 it ws the most firmly established truth in 
the natural universe and, in Mr. Bryan’s lan- 
guage, we shall have to accept it regardless 
of its effect. Let us, therefore, glance at some 
of the effects. 

I am not writing to convince evolutionists, 
I am writing to convince Mr. Bryan himself 
and his many followers. That you may avoid 
all religious doubts and difficulties, first ac- 
cept as the foundation of your faith the creed 
which runs through the Old and New Testa- 
ments alike and is best expressed in the grand 
old Latin phrase, “Pleni sunt cceli et terra 
gloria tua.” Without this creed, you may be 
an atheist or an agnostic. With this creed 
you are in a secure citadel of faith, and when 
discovery after discovery impels you to sur- 
render the preconceptions of man in his 
ignorance as to Joshua’s belief that the sun 
moved around the earth, as to the flatness 
of the earth, as to the universe being formed 
in six days of twenty-four hours, as to all the 
millions of species of animals and plants 


34 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


being made within four days, as to man being 
made in the image of God in one day, as 
to woman being made out of the rib of man, 
you remain serene, because you humbly ac- 
cept the universe and man as God willed them. 
You may be convinced that your misgiv- 
ings and prejudices against Nature will all be 
resolved, if you simply repeat to yourself: I 
accept Nature as God made it; truth is truth 
and must prevail. 

Nothing should be more clearly or more 
emphatically taught to our youth than that 
the Bible is the story of the spiritual and moral 
progress of man, in less degree his intellectual 
progress—in these senses a perpetual source 
of inspiration, of religious consolation, and 
the most permanent foundation of conduct. 
We naturalists accept as transcendent the 
teaching that the universe is by no means the 
result of accident or chance, but of an omni- 
present beauty and order, attributed in the 
Old Testament to Jehovah, in our language 
to God. Evolution by no means takes God 
out of the universe, as Mr. Bryan supposes, 
but it greatly increases the wonder, the mys- 


IN EDUCATION 35 


tery, and the marvelous order which we call 
“Natural Law,” pervading all Nature. 

No child should be taught that the Bible 
tells the story of Nature as it has been revealed 
to us through two thousand years of observa- 
tion, and especially during the last one hundred 
years. ‘There was no curiosity about Nature 
among the writers of the Bible, as there is 
little natural curiosity among Orientals to- 
day. It was not until the Book of Job was 
written, about 450 B.C., that we find the 
guiding precept of the naturalist: “Speak to 
the earth and it shall teach thee.” 


AUGUSTINE LEAVES NATURE TO THE 
-NATURALISTS 

When Mr. Bryan observes that evolution 
finds “no support in the Bible,” he is abso- 
lutely right, just as he is absolutely wrong 
when he maintains that belief in evolution 
ends in atheism. On this point I know I shall 
not convince him if I quote any scientific au- 
thority, but I feel that I may direct Mr. 
Bryan’s attention to a writer whom he has 
evidently not studied; namely, the great the- 


36 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


ologian of the fifth century, St. Augustine, 
354-430 A. D. I may quote St. Augustine as 
to the wisdom of leaving Nature to the natu- 
ralists: 


It very often happens that there is some ques- 
tion as to the earth or the sky, or the other ele- 
ments of this world . . . respecting which one who 
is not a Christian has knowledge derived from 
most certain reasoning or observation, and it is 
very disgraceful and mischievous and of all things 
to be carefully avoided, that a Christian speaking 
of such matters as being according to the Christian 
Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talk- 
ing such nonsense that the unbeliever perceiving 
him to be as wide from the mark as east from 
west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing. 


AUGUSTINE'S MODERN THEISTIC CONCEPTION 
OF EVOLUTION 

To Augustine also Mr. Bryan may be re- 
ferred for a sound and thoroughly modern 
theistic conception of evolution. Augustine 
held that all development takes its natural 
course through the powers imparted to mat- 
ter by the Creator; even the bodily structure 
of man himself is according to this plan, and 
therefore a product of this natural develop- 


IN EDUCATION 87 


ment; he taught that in the institution of Na- 
ture we should not look for miracles, but for 
the laws of Nature; he distinctly rejected the 
Mosaic idea of the six-day creation in favor 
of the teaching which, without violence to 
language, we may call a theory of evolution: 
that all things developed by causal energy and 
potency, not only the heavens, but also those 
living things which the waters and the earth 
produced, so that in due time, after long de- 
lays, they developed into their perfected forms. 

We may now leave this metaphysical part 
of the subject and return to the evidence that 
evolution was the plan and the only plan of 
Nature, that all species of animals and plants 
originated in this way, that man has ascended 
from the ranks of Nature. There was a time 
when man considered himself greatly superior 
to the animal kingdom; in fact, the Psalmist 
exalts him, giving him dominion over the 
whole earth; but since 1914, when the World 
War began, man has become more humble, 
he is not quite so confident of his superiority 
over the rest of God’s creation. 

The mode of origin of species was practically 


38 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


discovered in 1869 by a little-known German 
palzeontologist by the name of Waagen, but, 
like the great discovery of Mendel in heredity, 
this truth has been long in making its way, 
even among biologists. Waagen’s observation 
that species do not originate by chance or by 
accident, as Darwin at one time supposed, but 
through a continuous and well-ordered process, 
has since been confirmed by an overwhelming 
volume of testimony, so that we are now able 
to assemble and place in order line after line 
of animals in their true evolutionary succes- 
sion, extending, in the case of what I have 
called the edition de luxe of the horses, over 
millions of years. 

We speak to the earth from Eocene times 
onward to the closing age of man, and it al- 
ways teaches us exactly the same story. These 
facts are so well known and make up such an 
array of evidence that they form the chief 
foundation of the statement that evolution 
has long since passed out of the domain of 
hypothesis and theory, to which Mr. Bryan 
refers, into the domain of natural law. Evo- 
lution takes its place with the gravitation law 


IN EDUCATION 39 


of Newton. It should be taught in our schools 
simply as Nature speaks to us about it, and 
entirely separated from the opinions, material- 
istic or theistic, which have clustered about it. 

This is my answer to Mr. Bryan’s very nat- 
ural solicitude about the influence of evolution 
in our schools and colleges—a solicitude not 
inherent in the subject itself, but in the foolish- 
ness and conceit of certain of the teachers who 
are privileged to teach of the processes of life. 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 


It would not be true to say that the evolu- 
tion of man rests upon evidence as complete 
as that of the horse, for example, because we 
have traced man’s ancestors back only for a 
period of 400,000 years, as geologic time was 
conservatively estimated in 1893 by Secre- 
tary Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution, 
Washington; whereas, we have traced the 
horse back for a period of 3,000,000 years, ac- 
cording to similar estimates of geologic time. 

The very recent discovery of Tertiary man 
which I have just described in Natural His- 
tory (November-—December, 1921), living 


40 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


long before the Ice Age, certainly capable of 
walking in an erect position, having a hand 
and a foot fashioned like our own, also a brain 
of sufficient intelligence to fashion many dif- 
ferent kinds of implements, to make a fire, to 
make flint tools which may have been used 
for the dressing of hides as clothing, consti- 
tutes the most convincing answer to Mr. 
Bryan’s call for more evidence. It once more 
reminds us of the ignorance of man of the - 
processes of Nature, and sets a new boundary 
beyond which digging in the earth for more 
of truth must be directed. This Foxhall man, 
found near Ipswich, England, thus far known 
only by the flint implements he made and his 
fire, is the last bit of evidence in the direction 
of giving man a descent line of his own far 
back in geologic time. It tends to remove 
man still farther from the great lines which 
led to the man-apes, the chimpanzee, the 
orang, the gorilla, and the gibbon. This is not 
guesswork, this is a fact. It is another truth 
‘ which we shall have to accept regardless of 
its effect. No naturalist has ever ventured to 
place man so far back in geologic time as this 


IN EDUCATION 41 


actual discovery of the Foxhall man places 
him. In this instance again truth is stranger 
than hypothesis or speculation. 

Nearer to us is the Piltdown man, found 
not far from seventy-five miles to the south- 
west of Ipswich, England; still nearer in geo- 
logic time is the Heidelberg man, found on 
the Neckar River; still nearer is the Neander- 
thal man, whom we now know all about— 
his frame, his head form, his industries, his 
ceremonial burial of the dead, his belief in 
a future existence; nearer still is the Cré- 
Magnon man, who lived about 30,000 years 
ago, our equal if not our superior in intelli- 
gence. This chain of human ancestors was 
totally unknown to Darwin. He could not 
have even dreamed of such a flood of proof 
and truth. It is a dramatic circumstance that 
Darwin had within his reach the head of the 
Neanderthal man without realizing that it 
constituted the “missing link” between man 
and the lower order of creation. All this evi- 
dence is to-day within reach of every school- 
boy. It is at the service of Mr. Bryan. It 
will, we are convinced, satisfactorily answer 


42 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


in the negative his question: “Is it not more 
rational to believe in the creation of man by 
separate act of God than to believe in evolu- 
tion without a particle of evidence?” 

Let us accept the Bryan dictum: Truth 1s 
truth and must prevail. Truth is not in our 
minds; we must seek it in Nature and in Re- 
ligion and keep on seeking until we find the 
whole truth and nothing but the truth. 


IiI 
EVOLUTION AND DAILY LIVING 


This address to the Columbia University Assembly (April 
1, 1924) is in reply to the statement that belief in evolution 
is the offspring of atheism and the chief cause of modern 
decadence. 

This address is not a sermon, unless it be a sermon in 
stones. All that the old Romans summed up as Virtue in 
the conduct of life is affected by evolution. Belief in evolu- 
tion demands the highest ideals in conduct; it bears directly 
on our daily “mores” — our usages, fashions, customs, and 
behavior. Belief in evolution and faith in Christianity as a 
code of conduct are by no means incompatible; one can be 
both evolutionist and Christian. 


EVOLUTION AND DAILY LIVING 


The fundamentalists attack evolutionists as atheists ~ 
The creed of evolution — A new definition of evolution — 
The gradual emergence of man’s higher powers—Redeeming 
the reputation of the cave man — The triumph of observa- 
tion and failure of speculation — The naturalist replaces the 
materialist — Huxley’s reverence for the Bible — Evolution 
and morals — The press the most potent influence on daily 
life — Conduct and the future of our race. 


VOLUTION is challenged today by many 

good and well-meaning people, at once 
as an enemy of religion, as the cause of the 
rise of animalism, and as the chief cause of 
decadence in conduct. 

I am informed by the bishop of the Episco- 
pal diocese of Arizona that before a crowded 
house in Texas William Jennings Bryan re- 
cently classed me with Voltaire, Thomas 
Paine, and Robert Ingersoll as an atheist, be- 
cause I believe in Evolution. Nearer home, 
John Roach Straton posted this charge on the 
front of Calvary Baptist Church: “Is the 


American Museum of Natural History Mis- 
45 


46 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


spending the Taxpayers’ Money and Poison- 
ing the Minds of the School Children with 
False and Bestial Theories of Evolution? 
Should not the Bible be Displayed in the Mu- 
seum as well as Old Musty Bones?” I im- 
mediately sent to Doctor Straton the follow- 
ing letter: 


Such a notice is very serious indeed. I am quite 
mindful of the Scriptural injunction which, as I 
recall it at the present moment, reads: “*Whoso 
shall offend one of these little ones which believe 
in me, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck and that he were drowned 
in the depth of the sea.”? —The American Museum 
is visited annually by hundreds of thousands of 
children, and its lectures are attended altogether 
by millions of children. No one can point out 
either in the exhibition halls of the American 
Museum or in its lectures a single untruthful 
statement, because the lectures and the exhibi- 
tion halls do not set forth theories, but what may 
be actually observed in Nature by an intelligent 
child, if the opportunity is afforded. If you will 
examine carefully an exhibit in the Hall of the 
Age of Man you will see that it demonstrates 
very clearly not that man has descended from the 
monkeys or from the apes, but that he has a long 
and independent line of ascent of his own. 


IN EDUCATION AT 


It is not for man to question his Creator, but 
to accept every act of creation as the Act of God. 


If there is in the world anything that I love 
it is the children, and anything that I rever- 
ence it is the beauty of the child soul—the 
kind of pristine, natural beauty which Words- 
worth portrays in his “Ode on Intimations of 
Immortality.” 

I am myself, or endeavor to be, a consistent 
evolutionist; I also undertake the far more 
difficult task of being a consistent Christian. 
I believe in the past evolution of man and in 
the present evolution of man, and I am hope- 
ful of the future evolution of man, unless his 
conduct leads to his extinction, as it is now 
doing in many parts of the world. 


THE CREED OF EVOLUTION 


As summed up in my rapidly written reply 
to Bryan’s article in the New York Times of 
February 26, 1922, this simple, direct teaching 
of Nature is full of moral and spiritual force, 
if we keep the element of human opinion out 
of it: 


48 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


The moral principle inherent in evolution is 
that nothing can be gained in this world with- 
out an effort; the ethical principle inherent in 
evolution is that only the best has the right to 
survwe; the spiritual principle in evolution is 
the evidence of beauty, of order, and of design 
in the daily myriad of miracles to which we owe 


our existence. 


A NEW DEFINITION OF EVOLUTION 


I have come in my own mind to define 
evolution as a continuous creation of life fitted 
to a continuously changing world. This defini- 
tion is made, not from reading the works of 
other biologists, but from my own close ob- 
servations on animal and human evolution 
and through my lifelong researches in pale- 
ontology. I believe that not alone our physi- 
cal but our moral, our intellectual, even our 
spiritual, powers have ascended through a 
long, slow, upward movement, which we par- 
tially express in the utterly madequate word 
Evolution; Bergson’s term Creative Evolution 
is far nearer the actual truth. 


IN EDUCATION 49 


The creative evolution process actually con- 
sists of the incessant creation of new forms 
and combinations of energy in the animal 
world, of new means of enjoying the rest of 
the universe both in the animal and in the 
human world, of new moral, spiritual, and in- 
tellectual powers gained sometimes slowly, 
sometimes suddenly. This is the outstanding 
result of forty years of my own observation. 
Evolution as a greater or less development of 
the existing powers of a plant or animal is the 
least difficult part to comprehend; the crea- 
tion of new powers and faculties, especially of 
the human mind and spirit, is the most diffi- 
cult to comprehend—in fact, the incompre- 
hensible part of the whole process. 


EMERGENCE OF MAN’S HIGHER POWERS 


Our knowledge of the physical evolution of 
man, of his bodily structure, has advanced so 
rapidly that the end is almost in sight; namely, 
of the whole Age of Man of the last 500,000 
years and of the preceding Tertiary period. 


1'This subject is given fuller treatment in the closing chapter of 
this volume. 


50 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


But the physical structure of man is a rela- 
tively simple problem in comparative anato- 
my and paleontology. It is not his physical 
anatomy which makes man human; it is his 
moral, intellectual, and spiritual nature alone 
that makes him a member of the order Pri- 
mates of the great Swedish naturalist, Lin- 
neeus. 

So far as we can observe, the foundations 
of the moral nature of man were apparently 
laid in the subhuman stages, for certainly 
three of the cardinal human virtues—such as 
protection of the family, observance of the 
rights of others, including the rights of prop- . 
erty, and union for collective rights—exist in 
a very high degree in many of the living pri- 


mates, and probably existed as well in those 7 


as yet entirely unknown primates of the Ter- | 
tiary period from which we are descended. 


REDEEMING THE REPUTATION OF THE 
CAVE MAN 


Regarding the intellectual evolution of 
man, the case immediately becomes more 
difficult. I was never so impressed with this 


IN EDUCATION 51 


fact as in my journeys among the former habi- 
tations of the cavemen in northern Italy, 
France, and Spain. I soon conceived a great 
admiration for these men because of their un- 
doubted intellectual powers as observed not 
only in the superb development of the brain, 
but also in the high observational and artistic , 
powers manifested in their art. I am perhaps 
more proud of having helped to redeem the 
reputation of the cave men than of any other 
single achievement of mine in the field of an- 
thropology. ‘The cave man bore, and still 
bears, an evil reputation of being a brute, be- 
cause few people recognize that during the 
long cave period there were two entirely dif- 
ferent types of man—one of an extremely an- 
cient lower order, known as the Neanderthal 
race of hunters, suddenly succeeded in Europe 
by one of much higher order, known as the 
Cré-Magnon race of artists. The creation of 
this man of a higher order, with his moral, 
spiritual, and intellectual powers, is utterly 
incomprehensible as purely a process of the 
survival of the fittest. 

We have every reason to believe that the 


52 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


men of the Cré-Magnon race who dominated 
northern Spain, France, and England between 
twenty-five and forty thousand years ago could 
compete in the art schools with any of the ani- 
mal sculptors and painters of our day, and 
judging from the size and form of the brain 
of the Cré-Magnon youth I believe that they 
could enter any branch of the intellectual life 
of today on equal, if not superior, terms. We 
know that they were mystical and supersti- 
tious and believed in magic, and were, in a 
primitive sense, religious. We know that in 
their art they were absolutely truthful and 
sincere. We know that they were reverent 
because in the thousands of drawings, etch- 
ings, and paintings which they have left not a 
single irreverent one has been discovered, ex- 
cept in some of their representations of man. 
We know that they were conscientious because 
their drawing has the marks of fidelity to 
truth, to the last detail. We know that they 
loved beauty because they rapidly attained 
the full expression of beauty in the represen- 
tations of animal life. 

This emergence of the soul and of the mind 


IN EDUCATION 53 


of man prior to the poetry, the art, the litera- 
ture, the philosophy, and even the science of 
early civilization is what I refer to as the crea- 
tive element in evolution. The case of the 
Cré-Magnons is by no means unique. The 
men who wrote the epics of Homer had barely 
emerged from the northern forests. An Eskimo 
boy brought by Peary from the arctic region, 
educated by a tribe of primitive people who 
count only up to the number 5, competes suc- 
cessfully in one of our public schools. Two 
Peruvian brothers taken directly out of the 
forests attain high rank in a parochial school. 
We observe that intelligence dawned slowly 
in the mind of man, but we cannot observe 
why a mathematical mind arose before there 
was any science of numbers. 


TRIUMPH OF OBSERVATION; FAILURE OP 
SPECULATION 
The genesis of the intellectual and spiritual 
powers of man through the Lamarck-Spencer 
hypothesis of use and disuse fails as entirely 
as does the survival of the fittest or any other 
useful theory of genesis of the mind and of 


54 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the soul. All the Lamarckian and purely ma- 
terialistic hypotheses which were current when 
I was studying philosophy and biology in 1876 
have fallen one by one by the wayside, and 
the origin of the soul of man is more of a mys- 
tery than ever. All we know is that the soul 
did not originate in an instant of time, as 
Bryan believes; rather, in the language of 


Wordsworth, 


The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar. 


Every day during my forty-eight years’ 
observation and philosophy of Nature and of 
the biology of man I become more of a natu- 
ralist, less of a scientist, still less of a rational- 
ist. What has been the fate of the rationalism 
of 1876 or of the materialism of that day or 
of the other “isms”? which were held up to 
our tender student minds as bogies? I re- 
member the catch phrases: as to materialism, 
for example: 


“What is matter?” 
“Never mind.” 


IN EDUCATION 55 


**What is mind?” 
*“No matter.”’ 
“What is the soul?” 
“It is immaterial!’ 


Or as to the chemical nature of intellect: 
“The brain secretes thought as the liver 
secretes bile.”? Or as to the evolution of man 


—the parody: 


There was an ape in days that were earlier, 
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier, 
Centuries more, and his thumb gave a twist 
And he was a Man and a Positivist. 


Or the squib on clericalism, Huxley’s saying 
about the two chambers of the heart, refer- 
ring to the resemblance of the bicuspid valve 
to the bishop’s mitre: “We may always re- 
member that the tricuspid valve is on the right 
side of the heart and the mitral valve on the 
left, because a bishop is never known to be in 


the right.” 


THE NATURALIST REPLACES THE 
MATERIALIST 


Both scientific and religious men have 
largely passed out of this critical, polemic, 


56 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


materialistic and mechanistic period of an- 
tagonism between religion and science, and 
Bryan’s réle is that of the grave-digger of 
fossil issues and controversies. 

The truth is that both sides are far more 
humble and less cocksure than they were in 
the ’70’s. Human reason in the ’70’s, after 
having been kept indoors by the theologians 
for nearly ten centuries, was like a boy out 
of school—it knew no bounds; it was full of 
brisk confidence; it did not realize, as human 
reason does today, that Nature is super- 
rational. We have all found that Nature is 
full of lurking surprises and contradictions in 
her methods. The bishops and clericals have 
learned that so far from the world being an- 
thropocentric, man seems to’ have been one 
of the last things thought of in creation. 

No overconfident rationalist of 1876 dreamt 
of radiant energy as we know it now; no one 
can dream of biology as it will be fifty years 
hence when it is studied by physical meth- 
ods. Rationalists are more humble now, be- 
cause in the hunting-field of human thought 
the scientists have taken as many falls as 


IN EDUCATION 57 


the theologians; the honors are even in this 
regard. 


HUXLEY S REVERENCE FOR THE BIBLE 


My great teacher Huxley felt the lmita- 
tions of the human reason in defining himself 
as an agnostic or as an honest doubter. His 
system of teaching evolution and morals was 
diametrically opposed to that of Herbert 
Spencer, as was also his attitude toward re- 
ligion and the Bible. 

Brought up, as I was, by a devout Christian 
mother, Huxley retained his love and rever- 


ence for the English Bible: 


When the great mass of the English people de- 
clare that they want to have the children in the 
elementary schools taught the Bible, and when 
it is plain from the terms of the Act... . that it 
was intended that such Bible-reading should be 
permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting it 
could be shown, I do not see what reason there is 
for opposing that wish. Certainly, I, individu- 
ally, could with no shadow of consistency oppose 
the teaching of the children of other people that 
which my own children are taught todo... . 

I have always been strongly in favour of secular 
education, in the sense of education without the- 


58 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


ology; but I must confess I have been no less seri- 
ously perplexed to know by what practical mea- 
sures the religious feeling, which 1s the essential 
basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the present 
utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters, 
without the use of the Bible. [Italics my own.] 


For these reasons I regard Huxley’s influ- 
ence on Conduct as far more lasting than that 
of Spencer. While in 1879 the works of Her- 
bert Spencer were regarded with reverence 
and awe and were read by thousands of stu- 
dents like a new revelation of truth, the Her- 
bert Spencer system has crumbled so far as it 
depended on pure reason, so far as it departed 
from direct methods of observation. Ernst 
Haeckel was the great proponent of Darwin- 
ism on the Continent of Europe, and the chief 
elements of his theories of the origin and evo- 
lution of man have crumbled like those of 
Spencer. Darwin as an observer of Nature is 
still strong and will always be our master; so 
far as his works were drawn directly from Na- 
ture they are truer and more wonderful than 
ever, while the entirely speculative or ration- 


alistic side of Darwin’s philosophy has largely 


IN EDUCATION 59 


failed. Huxley, from 1863 until his death in 
1895 the boldest proponent of the evolution 
of man among English-speaking people, was 
always a very cautious thinker, overcautious 
in his theories as to the evolution of man. 
Huxley never committed himself to the sur- 
vival-of-the-fittest theory as to the origin of 
species as adequate, and in his last public ut- 
terance, the Romanes Lecture, he declared 
that we could not derive the moral or spiritual 
evolution of man from Darwin’s hypothesis of 
the struggle for existence. In this declaration, 
which has been quoted so often as divorcing 
evolution from conduct, I do not for a moment 
agree with my great master of 1879-80. We 
know far more about the actual evolution 
process than Huxley did, because in his time 
the creative element in evolution had not been 
discovered. 
' It may be said without scientific or religious 
prejudice that the world-wide loss of the older 
religious and Biblical foundation of morals 
has been one of the chief causes of human de- 
cadence in conduct, in literature, and in art. 
This, however, is partly due to a complete 


60 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


misunderstanding of creative evolution, which 
is a process of ascent, not of descent. 


EVOLUTION AND MORALS 


A challenge to evolution now is a challenge 
to Nature itself, and Nature is the oldest and 
wisest instructor of both minds and morals. 
Cicero observed, “‘I turn to Nature as I would 
to God,” and this is the underlying thought 
of modern conceptions of evolution in relation 
to conduct; great religious thinkers, like St. 
Augustine, Dante, Charles Kingsley, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, have from time to time re- 
minded us of this chief doctrine of Cicero; 
Kingsley, who followed in the steps of Cicero, 
St. Augustine, and Dante, declared that there 
could be no antithesis between the order of 
Nature and true religion. 

“0 tempora, O mores,” exclaimed Cicero when 
he was outraged with the conduct of life, and 
particularly with the political life of Rome; 
Horace at the same period lamented the loss 
of the ancient virtues. Times have changed 
little since 50 B. C. and both man and Nature 
are exactly the same now as they were then. 


IN EDUCATION 61 


Whereas a little knowledge of evolution has 
proved to be a very dangerous thing in hu- 
man history, a more profound knowledge of 
evolution makes it a very safe thing for the 
present and future progress of the human 
race. Lest we become too serious, let us refer 
to the immortal Pickwick. We recall where 
Sam Weller speaks of the fascination of wid- 
ows he says: “A little widow is a dangerous 
thing.” I am often reminded of this when I 
see the first effects of science and of the prin- 
ciple of evolution not only on the student 
mind, but on the mind of the man of the 
street and on the mind of the man of letters. 

As to Nature’s firm foundations for religion 
and morals in our own day, may I refer to the 
bearing which the new creative idea of evo- 
lution has upon the old teleological argument 
for Design as set forth in Paley’s “ Evidences,” ! 
the standard text-book of my student days? 
Huxley once told me that Paley’s argument 
for the direct handiwork of the Creator was 
so logically, so ingeniously and convincingly 
written that he always kept it at his bedside 

1“ Natural Theology,”’ William Paley. 


62 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


for last reading at night. So long as the chance 
or fortuitous hypothesis of adaptation reigned, 
Paley’s argument for the existence of God was 
set aside, but our more profound knowledge 
of creative evolution, gained by direct ob- 
servation of Nature, leaves Paley’s argument 
just as strong as it ever was. Paley’s “Evi- 
dences’’ may be challenged now no more ef- 
fectively than it could be challenged in 1858. 

Bryan and Straton as public mentors en- 
deavor to take the place of Cicero and Horace, 
without any of their literary genius or truth- 
loving spirit. They are the demagogues of 
modern conduct; they tell us that Nature and 
Evolution are inconsistent with Religion and 
are undermining Conduct. Let us boldly de- — 
clare that freedom of thought has led to license 
of thought and expression; let us lament the 
disuse of the Bible in its eternal influence on 
conduct; but let us not for a moment imagine 
that belief in evolution or any other great 
truth of Nature releases us from the highest 
ideals of conduct. Let us rather put every 
one of the daily practical problems of conduct 
to the crucial test of its bearing on human prog- 


IN EDUCATION 63° 


ress and on the future of our race and of human 
society. 

What, for example, will be the influence on 
human progress of our attitude on Religion, 
on Individualism, on Marriage, on Fashion, 
on our Intellectual and Spiritual Life, on 
Government, on Freud’s Psychology, on the 
Stage and the Movies, on Problem Literature, 
on the daily newspaper? I can prove that 
each of these current questions and problems 
bears upon the evolution of our race. 


THE MORAL POTENCY OF THE PRESS 


As for the press, it may interest my readers 
to know that I invariably study the daily 
papers from the standpoint of human evolu- 
tion, because I hold that the press and the 
movies are by far the most potent influences 
upon conduct in America at the present time. 

The editorial influence of the press is al- 
most uniformly good so far as domestic mor- 
als are concerned. The news-column influence 
of the press is partly bad but mostly good, be- 
cause publicity tends on the whole to elevate 
morals. The advertising pages of the press are 


64 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


divided in their influence: health advertise- 
ments are to the good; feminine-fashion ad- 
vertisements are mostly to the bad. The 
sum of press influence is morally good but in- 
tellectually bad, because it creates what I call 
the jazz mind and a disproportionate sense 
of relative values. 










Political 
Miscon- 
duct 


Polities— | Stage and 
Domestic | Movies 






Athletics 


Fashion 





New York: 
5,757 2,889 2,352 
6,070 9,148 5,027 
4,692 1,834 3,294 


, American.. 438 





16,519 13,871 10,673 


Educa- | Food and an 
tion Health | Religion 






Politics— 
Foreign 





1,409 932 1,037 





4 [imes..... 956 656 1,043 
} American. . 3,613 57 692 182 


2,422 | 2,280 | 2,262 





With the aid of the School of Journalism 
of Columbia University I made a quantity 
survey of the amount of space devoted by 
three great newspapers of the day to ten prin- 


IN EDUCATION 65 


cipal subjects for the month of February, 1924. 
The measurements are made in linear col- 
umns, twenty-one inches to the column, and 
advertisements are included because adver- 
tisements dominate fashions, as shown in the 
table on the previous page. All of these 
headlined subjects are related to our daily 
life and conduct in a manner we may not be 
conscious of. 

It is observed in the above table that the 
press treats in descending order of importance 
the following subjects which daily affect our 
lives: Fashion, Athletics, Political Miscon- 
duct, Politics, national and local (2. e., govern- 
ment), the Stage and the Movies, Private 
Misconduct (crime, etc.), Foreign Politics, 
Education, Food and Health, Religion. 

Small wonder that ours is not a religious 
age; small wonder that education, which Lin- 
coln regarded as the very first concern in the 
conduct of the State, is little in our thought; 
small wonder that the average young Amer- 
ican is convinced of prevailing political mis- 
conduct; small wonder the craze for athletics. 
It is a question whether the fine influence on 


66 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


conduct of the editorial writer is not more 
than offset by the man who arranges the news 
and advertising columns. 


CONDUCT AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 


And what is our own attitude on all these 
daily problems of our life? Is it constructive 
or creative? Does it tend to human ascent? 
If our conduct works well now how will it 
work on our descendants a century hence? 
Are we living in such a way as to have de- 
scendants? This is the very newest aspect of 
the human-evolution problem, namely, what 
will be the bearing of the present-day attitude 
toward daily practical questions of conduct on 
the future of our race. 

It is not immediately obvious, but a mo- 
ment’s reflection shows that our future is in- 
evitably bound by daily practical questions 
of conduct. For example, we may smile at 
prohibition, but when we look at it from the 
standpoint of the future progress of man we 
become serious; every drinking man I knew 
in college in 1876 and every drinking student 
of mine up to the year 1890 has paid the death 


IN EDUCATION 67 


penalty, and they were all fine men who could 
hardly be spared. As the great English phy- 
sician, Sir Andrew Clark, said to one of his 
wayward patients: “Nature forgives but 
never forgets.”’ 

It may amuse us to read of individualistic 
young women abandoning their husbands and 
their children, but when we Americans learn 
that as a race we are rapidly dying out our 
amusement ceases. In this connection let us 
read the Very Reverend William Ralph Inge, 
Dean of St. Paul’s, called “gloomy” because 
he has the courage to tell the truth; not 
really gloomy, he is at once the leading moral 
and scientific preacher of our times. 

I am not gloomy either, but as a consistent 
evolutionist I desire to see the conduct of the 
young men and women of America so governed 
by religion and by Nature that they will 
evolve in the right direction. 





IV 
THE CREDO OF A NATURALIST 


“The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice 
or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the 
laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important 
task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the con- 
science, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. Each of 
these two activities represents a deep and vital function of 
the soul of man, and both are necessary for the life, the prog- 
ress, and the happiness of the human race.” (From a Credo 
signed by fifteen eminent scientists, May 26, 1923.) 


THE CREDO OF A NATURALIST 


The philosophy and psychology of 1876 and of 1926 — 
Our psychologists lose the soul — Brain physiology replaces 
the older psychology — Physicists rediscover the soul and 
the spiritual nature of man — Rudolf Eucken and Walter 
Rathenau in contrast with Dewey — Harnack and Huxley’s 
pupil Morgan — “‘Creative” and “‘emergent” evolution — 
Physiologists Martin and Haldane on Conduct — The fail- 
ure of pure mechanism — Wordsworth expresses our credo. 


N 1876, when I began my philosophic and 
scientific studies in Princeton, the long 
struggle between Supernaturalism and Natu- 
ralism was culminating in a complete victory 
for Naturalism. In England Mill and Huxley 
had won the battle for freedom of the human 
reason; in Germany along with Haeckel’s bat- 
tles for Darwin there had sprung up an ex- 
treme form of materialism; in France the 
mechanistic teaching of Descartes was re- 
vived. The pendulum of thought had swung 
completely away from the teleological or pur- 
posive interpretation of Nature that had en- 
tirely dominated the natural science of the 


first half of the century. 
71 


72 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


The whole rising generation of naturalists 
dropped the Bible and eagerly read Herbert 
Spencer, whose philosophy and biology be- 
came a new gospel; the successive editions 
and translations of his works were second 
only to those of Darwin. Among American 
students Spencer was still supreme as late as 
1891 when I came to Columbia. As for his 
influence among laymen, I well remember 
Judge Carter, of Fort Bridger, Wyoming, and 
his shrine of Spencer’s complete writings, en- 
cased with a photograph of the great closet 
philosopher. Now Spencer has become merely 
an historic figure in the history of natural 
philosophy; he is no longer a living force. 

It would be difficult to fix the date for the 
return swing of the pendulum away from 
purely materialistic and mechanistic inter- 
pretations toward spiritual and _ teleological 
interpretations not in the least resembling the 
old but pointing toward new forms of belief 
and of faith in which there is less schism be- 
tween the teachings of Nature and the aspira- 
tions of Religion. The World War certainly 


accelerated this spiritual movement, because 


IN EDUCATION 73 


it engendered a horror of mechanism and ma- 
terialism and placed a new emphasis upon the 
spiritual basis of conduct rather than upon 
the mechanistic. The movement was not led, 
as might have been expected, by biologists, 
still less by psychologists. 


OUR PSYCHOLOGISTS LOSE THE SOUL 


In the recent writings of two of the leading 
psychologists and philosophers of America, 
Dewey, of Columbia, and McDougall, of Har- 
vard, it appears that psychologists have lost 
touch with the soul.’ Contrasting the older 
and orthodox psychology with the present, 
Dewey remarks that “the soul or mind or 
consciousness was thought of as self-contained 
and self-enclosed. Now in the career of an 
individual if it is regarded as complete in it- 
self instincts clearly come before habits. 
Generalize this individualistic view, and we 


1 As defined in 1894 by the Reverend E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D., 
the soul has a double significance in its historic and even in its Bibli- 
cal usage: Soul and Spirit. % ¥0x%7 (the soul) contains the passions 
and desires, which animals have in common with man. 16 tvévy.% 
(the spirit) is the highest and distinctive part of man. In 1 Thess. 
Paul says: “‘I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be pre- 
served blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “‘Dic- 
tionary of Phrase and Fable,” E. Cobham Brewer, p. 1163. 


74 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


have an assumption that all customs, all 
significant episodes in the life of individuals 
can be carried directly back to the operation 
of instincts. . . . Only the hold of a tradi- 
tional conception of the singleness and sim- 
plicity of soul and self blinds us to perceiving 
what they mean: the relative fluidity and 
diversity of the constituents of selfhood.” } 

McDougall is still more brief with the soul; 
he says that “ancient psychology accepted 
the soul, and was chiefly concerned to distin- 
guish the various functions of the soul and to 
assign them seats in the various parts of the 
body. In the modern period this type de- 
veloped into what is generally called ‘faculty 
psychology.’ ... Both the older and the 
later form of faculty psychology have long 
been discredited. The conception of a soul 
or mind endowed with certain most funda- 
mental faculties is one that we cannot wholly 
dispense with.” 2 

From Dewey and McDougall, I turned to 
my friend James McKeen Cattell, eminent 


1“ Auman Nature and Conduct,” John Dewey, pp. 94, 138. 
2 “Outline of Psychology,” William McDougall, pp. 12, 13. 


IN EDUCATION 75 


psychologist and editor of Sczence, asking him 
if his fellow psychologists had really lost the 
soul. He replied: “I can talk more intelli- 
gently about any other subject than the soul. 
It 1s well known that psychology lost its soul 
long ago and is said now to be losing tts mind. 
You should inquire of Descartes and the 
Catholic Church; it is a good subject for a 
palzeontologist like yourself !”’ 

Hunting in the chambers of my memory for 
an explanation of this loss of the soul by psy- 
chologists, I asked Cattell if he recalled the 
sensation made by a paper entitled ‘“‘'The Nor- 
mal Knee-Jerk.’’ He reminded me that this 
was the opening article in Stanley Hall’s new 
Journal of Psychology, started in the year 
1887. This article was the curtain-raiser for 
the long-ensuing quest of the spirit of man 
by laboratory methods, mechanical, chem- 
ical, analytical, that has resulted in psychol- 
ogy wandering through the mazes of brain 
and nerve and sense-organ physiology, in 
which all vision of the soul has finally been 
lost. 


76 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


PHYSICISTS REDISCOVER THE SOUL 


It appears that we may turn to physicists 
and physiologists for a rediscovery of the soul 
and the spiritual nature of man. Robert A. 
Millikan, the last Nobel Prize man in physics, 
tells us in 1921 that from his point of view 
there are only two ideas or beliefs upon which 
the weal or woe of the race depends and that 
the most important thing in the world rs a be- 
lief vn the reality of moral and spiritual values. 
“It was because we lost that belief that the 
World War came, and if we do not now find 
a way to regain and strengthen that belief, 
then science is of no value. But, on the other 
hand, it is also true that even with that be- 
lief there is little hope of progress except 
through its twin sister, only second in impor- 
tance, namely, belief in the spirit and the 
method of Galileo, of Newton, of Faraday, 
and of the other great builders of this modern 
scientific age,—this age of the understanding 
and the control of nature, upon which let us 
hope we are just entering.” } 


1*The Significance of Radium,” R. A. Millikan, Science, July 1, 
1921. 


IN EDUCATION 77 


EUCKEN AND RATHENAU 


Long before 1920 the rapprochement be- 
tween theology and science was initiated in 
Germany by Rudolf Eucken, of Jena, who 
won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1908. 
Eucken contended that “the age must win for 
itself an essentially new form of Christianity 
answering to that phase of the Spiritual Life 
to which the world’s historical development 
has led us. . . . The more clearly we realize 
that if Reason does not reside in the whole 
structure of the universe, it cannot be found 
In any single spot of it,—the sooner shall we 
be entitled to hope that the religious problem 
will win back the passionate enthusiasm that 
is its due, and that our work on it will no 
longer assume the attitude of speculative re- 
flection, but pass into the constructive action 
of a forward policy.” ? 

More recently Walter Rathenau gave the 
noblest expression of this spirit: 

Yet as surely as we know that the awakening 


soul is the divine sanctuary for which we live and 
are, that love is the redeemer who will liberate 


1“ Christianity and the New Idealism,” Rudolf Eucken. 


78 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


our innermost good and will weld us to a higher 
unity, just so surely do we recognize in the in- 
evitable world-struggle of mechanization the one 
essential—the will toward unity. In so far as we 
oppose to mechanization the token at which it 
pales, namely, transcendental philosophy, spiritual 
devotion, faith in the absolute; in so far as we illu- 
minate the true nature of mechanization, reaching 
out to the secret core of the will to unity—so far 
shall mechanization be dethroned, and constrained — 
to service. ... Woe to the race and to its future 
should it remain deaf to the voice of conscience; 
should it still be petrified in materialistic apathy; 
should it rest content with tinsel; should it sub- 
mit to the bondage of selfishness and hate. We 
are not here for the sake of possessions, nor for 
the sake of power, nor for the sake of happiness; 
we are here that we may elucidate the divine ele- 
ments in the human spirit.} 


There is more warmth in the rediscovery of 
the soul by Rathenau than there is in the 
chilling counsel on conduct by our psycholo- 
gist Dewey, who says that “a morals based 
on study of human nature instead of upon 
disregard for it would find the facts of man 
continuous with those of the rest of nature, 


and would thereby ally ethics with physics 
1“Was Wird Werden,” Walter Rathenau. 


IN EDUCATION ©“ 79 


and biology. It would find the nature and ac- 
tivities of one person coterminous with those 
of other human beings, and therefore link 
ethics with the study of history, sociology, 
law, and economics. . . . Until the integrity 
of morals with human nature and of both 
with the environment is recognized, we shall 
be deprived of the aid of past experience to 
cope with the most acute and deep problems 
of life.’’ ! 

In England, religious as well as scientific 
opinion is still widely divided. The rapproche- 
ment between theology and science probably 
began in the spiritual emotions aroused in all 
minds during the World War, but this move- 
ment first took outward expression at the 
Cardiff meeting of the British Association of 
1920 in an enlightened sermon by Reverend 
E. W. Barnes, distinguished mathematician, 
Fellow of the Royal Society, Canon of West- 
minster, and now Bishop of Birmingham. 
As reported in Nature of September 2, 1920, 
“not for a long time has such a conciliatory 
attitude been presented to men of science by 


1“ Human Nature and Conduct,” John Dewey, pp. 12, 13. 


80 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


a leader in the Church as is represented by 
Canon Barnes’s address. The position taken 
up in it is one upon which the two standards 
of science and religion can be placed side by 
side to display to the world their unity of pur- 
pose. For Science and Religion are twin sis- 
ters, each studying her own sacred book of 
God and building a structure which remains 
sure only when established upon the founda- 
tion of truth. . . .. Whatever the end may 
be, we are urged to the quest by that some- 
thing within ourselves which has produced 
from a primitive ancestry the noblest types 
of intellectual man, and regards evolution, not 
as a finite, but as an infinite process of de- 
velopment of spiritual as well as of physical 


life.” 


HARNACK AND HUXLEY’S PUPIL MORGAN 


The editor of Nature, in reviewing the 
epoch-making Conference of Modern Church- 
men at Oxford at the end of August, 1925, 
quotes the scientific theologian Harnack: “In 
spite of intense effort our modern thinkers 
have not succeeded in developing a satisfac- 


IN EDUCATION 81 


tory system of ethics and one corresponding 
to our deepest needs on the basis of monism. 
They will never succeed in doing so.” 

From England also, in the Gifford Lectures 
of 1922, comes C. Lloyd Morgan’s “Emergent 
Evolution.”” Morgan, one of the most emi- 
nent pupils of Huxley, is at once experimental 
biologist, psychologist, natural philosopher. 
His volume reflects his culminating life- 
thought, which began in youthful conversa- 
tion with Huxley. Huxley asked what the 
young student Morgan understood by “innate 
powers” and Morgan replied: “May not an 
internal formative tendency be as distinctly 
recognized as an internal conservative ten- 
dency?”? Whereas the Catholic protagonist 
Mivart, and subsequently the great naturalist 
Wallace, dwelt upon the idea of the leap or 
sudden advance from the animal to the hu- 
man state of mind and of soul, Huxley in this 
conversation dwelt upon the absence of any 
leap, upon continuity in both brain and mind 
from the animal state to the human stage. 
Morgan asked on what grounds Huxley spoke 
of brain as an antecedent of thought and why 


82 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


one might not follow Spinoza in regarding 
thought and brain as alike playing their parts 
in causing the evolution of man. In conclu- 
sion Huxley dismissed the neophyte Morgan 
with the encouraging words, “You might 
well make all this a special field of inquiry.” 


*“CREATIVE” AND ‘‘EMERGENT” EVOLUTION 


The outcome of this kindly advice is the 
constructive scheme of evolution to which 
Morgan has devoted his life, as summed up 
in his volume “Emergent Evolution.” It 
differs from Bergson’s famous work, “*Crea- 
tive Evolution,” in containing the purposive 
principle that “leads upwards towards God, 
as directive Activity within a scheme which 
aims at constructive consistency.” Morgan 
continues that there may be something more 
in the heart of events than efficiency, some- 
thing more than causation, and for this he 
takes the risk of “the higher acknowledg- 
ment, the Creative Source of evolution—this 
is God.” Of the relation of brain and thought 
he says that the brain is par excellence the 
organ of the guidance of behavior; for ex- 


IN EDUCATION 83 


ample, the form and color are contained in 
the rainbow, but “‘it is the paradox of beauty 
that its expressiveness belongs to the beauti- 
ful thing itself and yet would not be there 
except for the mind.” If the idealist assert 
that color lives only at top, 2. ¢., in the mind, 
irrespective of physical correlates in the or- 
ganism; or if the realist assert that it lives 
only at bottom, 7. e., in the thing, irrespective 
of psychical correlates in the organism, Mor- 
gan submits that each goes beyond the evi- 
dence. Passing on from this principle of pure 
causation Morgan thus sums up his philos- 


ophy: 


Hence it is taken for granted as scarcely open 
to question by practical folk, that mind is pre- 
eminently a cause of certain noteworthy changes 
in the face of nature, and is in a very special sense 
active,—so much so that the activity we feel, 
when through exercise of the will we are ourselves 
causes, best illustrates what is meant by causal 
activity. Carry this a stage further, lifting it to 
a higher plane of thought, and we have the widely 
accepted belief that ultimately all observable 
change is due to some form of Spiritual Activity. 


The timeliness of Morgan’s search of the 


84 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


spiritual is that it springs from the experience 
and observation of a highly trained zoologist 
and experimental psychologist—certainly a 
peer in his field of research. It is not the 
perishable closet philosophy of Herbert Spen- 
cer nor the brilliant abstract thought of Henri 
Bergson, thought not based on personal ex- 
perience or experiment. In reviewing his posi- 
tion Morgan states that “emergent evolution 
works upwards from matter, through life, to 
consciousness which attains in man its highest 
reflective or supra-reflective level. It accepts 
the ‘more’ at each ascending stage as that 
which is given, and accepts it to the full. 
The most subtle appreciation of the artist or 
the poet, the highest aspiration of the saint, 
are no less accepted than the blossom of the 
water-lily, the crystalline fabric of snow-flake, 
or the minute structure of the atom. Emer- 
gent evolution urges that the ‘more’ of any 
given stage, even the highest, involves the 
‘less’ of the stages which were precedent to 
it and continue to coexist with it.” He feels 
that we may acknowledge, on the one hand, 
a physical world that we observe and study 


IN EDUCATION 85 


through our senses and, on the other hand, an 
immaterial Source of all changes therein; 
namely, God, on Whom all evolutionary 
processes ultimately depend. “In my belief 
in God, on Whom all things depend, I am 
certainly not alone. I would fain not stand 
alone in combining with this belief, and all 
that it entails, that full and frank acceptance 
of the naturalistic interpretation of the world 
which is offered by emergent evolution.” ? 


MARTIN AND HALDANE ON CONDUCT 


In England again, Professor J. S. Haldane, 
eminent physiologist, in his essay, “Biology 
and Religion,’’? tells us that he cannot regard 
the mechanistic theory of life as tenable; that 
“it involves quite impossible assumptions and 
leads us nowhere in respect of the charac- 
teristic phenomena of life. Not only the 
newspapers, but also scientific men, continue 
to speak of the mechanism of life and he- 
redity; I confess that such an expression has 
no meaning whatsoever to me. We cannot 


1“‘Emergent Evolution,” C. Lloyd Morgan, pp. 33, 89, 226, 229, 
276, 297-299. 
2 “Biology and Religion,” John Scott Haldane. 


86 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


dispense with the distinctive conception of 
life. Let there be no mistake, however, 
about what this implies. It implies that the 
old conception of visible reality which Galileo 
and Newton set forth has broken down; and 
that there is no use in appealing to that ¢on- 
ception in support of a mechanistic theory of 
life. Life would be unintelligible on that con- 
ception; but it 1s reality that science has to 
deal with, and not an ideal world of mechan- 
ism.” 

As to religion and conduct, Haldane adds: 
“We are the children of a materialistic age. 
We look for a soul consisting, if not of ordi- 
nary matter in the mechanical sense, yet of 
something which is only a thinly veiled imi- 
tation of it. We look, also, for a similarly 
constituted God. Such entities can never be 
found. God is with us, in us, and everywhere 
around us, as Jesus taught. . . . If I thought 
that my country could get on equally well 
without churches I should not care what was 
taught in them. But I do not think so. We 
need to be constantly reminded of that spir- 
itual reality which manifests itself in willing 


IN EDUCATION 87 


service of every kind, and without the per- 
ception of which our country would relapse 
into chaos.”’ 

American scientific and philosophic thought 
does not lead; it follows that of England and 
of Germany; also that of France, where since 
the World War there has been a spiritual and 
religious revival, although not, so far as the 
writer knows, in the minds of scientific men. 
However, the recent American spiritual move- 
ment did not come from abroad, but from the 
indignation aroused by the ignorant assaults 
of William Jennings Bryan on the evolution 
theory. In 1923 a statement was drawn up 
by thirty-five prominent Americans, among 
whom were fifteen eminent scientists, in- 
cluding four mathematical physicists (Milli- 
kan, Pupin, Noyes, Birkoff), one astronomer 
(Campbell), seven biologists (Welch, Conklin, 
Coulter, Osborn, Merriam, Walcott, Mayo), 
two civil engineers (Carty, Dunn), one psy-- 
chologist (Angell). This “Joint Statement 
upon the Relations of Science and Religion” 
is partly cited at the beginning of this article, 
and it concludes with the following sentence: 


88 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


“It is a sublime conception of God which is 
furnished by science, and one wholly con- 
sonant with the highest ideals of religion, 
when it represents Him as revealing Himself 
through inbreathing of life into its constituent 
matter, culminating in man with his spiritual 
nature and all his Godlike powers.” 

Many other eminent physicists, astrono- 
mers, biologists, and psychologists of America 
would naturally decline to subscribe to such a 
“credo of faith” as this, either because they 
are still sincerely convinced of the adequacy of 
the mechanistic theory of philosophy and of 
the psychologic creeds for the conduct of life, 
such as we have cited from Dewey and 
McDougall, or because they prefer to remain 
in the perfectly consistent and defensible for- 
tress of agnosticism erected by my old friend 
and teacher Huxley. 

For my own part, I aided my friend Milii- 
kan in the wording of the joint statement of 
the thirty-five American religious leaders, 
scientists, and men of affairs, and, with the 
fourteen other scientists, I signed it because 
I am thoroughly convinced that the natural- 


IN EDUCATION 89 


ist needs a credo or profession of his faith, 
even if this credo is very different from that 
drilled into his youthful mind and memory 
before the world entered into universal ac- 
ceptance of the law of evolution. 

I well remember the final address of a dis- 
tinguished physiologist, Henry Newell Martin, 
also a pupil of Huxley, before the American 
Society of Naturalists in Boston, in which he 
said, so far as I recall: ‘“‘ We science teachers 
have been making a great mistake; we have 
been developing the minds of our students 
and neglecting their souls.” These words 
made a profound impression. [I also recall 
a conversation with Huxley about the im- 
mortality of the soul and how reverently he 
approached this question. The inscription on 
his gravestone, by Mrs. Huxley, is consistent 
with his agnostic attitude of mind: 

And if there be no meeting past the grave, 

Tf all is silence, darkness, yet ’tis rest; 

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep, 


For He still giveth His beloved sleep, 
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best! 


Many of us are familiar with Huxley’s 


90 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


tribute to the Bible, not only as one of the 
most exquisite in diction, but as one of the 
most profound in conviction that our age needs 
the lofty moral teachings of the Bible. Hux- 
ley himself was brought up with very strict 
religious training by a gifted mother who was 
a devout Sabbatarian. In the life of this re- 
vered teacher and in the lives of many friends 
and colleagues in various branches of science 
of similar religious training, I have observed 
qualities of truthfulness, of straightforward- 
ness, of righteousness, of self-effacement that 
are ingrained in human character by the right 
kind of religious training and of which human 
character is defrauded by bigotry, by blind 
adherence to dogma, and by the religious fa- 
naticism of such men as Bryan and Straton. 


THE FAILURE OF PURE MECHANISM 


These are the main ethical grounds for the 
credo of a naturalist. The philosophical and 
metaphysical grounds for a credo are of an 
entirely different order. They spring from the 
failure of materialism and of pure mechanism 
to give an interpretation of creative evolution 


IN EDUCATION 91 


that satisfies our reason. Our youthful con- 
fidence in the powers of reason has been shat- 
tered; like Icarus, we have taken our flight, 
and the wings of reason have ceased to sus- 
tain us. 

If this thought of the impotence of human 
reason impresses the physicists, it impresses 
biologists still more cogently. Many biolo- 
gists have entirely abandoned mechanistic the- 
ories of adaptation and have frankly revived 
the old purposive interpretation of Nature, 
in the guise of vitalism, or élan vital. I do 
not belong to any of these schools, but if I 
have made a single contribution to biology 
which I feel confident is permanent, it is the 
profession that living Nature is purposive; it 
is the profession that Democritus was wrong 
in raising the hypothesis of fortuity, and that 
Aristotle was right in claiming that the order 
of living things as we know them precludes 
fortuity and demonstrates purpose. 


WORDSWORTH EXPRESSES OUR CREDO 


This purpose pervades all Nature, from 
nebula to man. Herbert Spencer may call it 


92 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the Unknowable; the naturalist, with Words- 
worth, may call it the Wisdom and Spirit of 
the Universe. 


Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe! 

Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought 
And givest to forms and images a breath 
And everlasting motion! 


¥ 
THE EARTH SPEAKS TO BRYAN 


Bryan’s pledge of 1922: The real question is, Did God use 
evolution as His plan? If tt could be shown that man, instead 
of being made in the image of God, 1s a development of beasts 
we would have to accept it, regardless of tts effect, for truth is 
truth and must prevail. But when there is no proof we have a 
right to consider the effect of the acceptance of an unsupported 
hypothesis. 


This is Bryan’s second line of defense, namely, that the 
evidence for the evolution of man is wholly inadequate. 
This is met by the reply that there is none so blind as he 
who will not see, none so deaf as he who will not hear. 

The resonant voice of the earth is dwelt upon in this chap- 
ter, in which Osborn replies to Bryan and the fundamentalists 
in the language of the Bible. The overwhelming evidence for 
human evolution is summed up in two subsequent chapters. 


THE EARTH SPEAKS TO BRYAN 


Bryan does not fulfil his pledge —'The Tennessee trial a 
new inquisition — The enlightened words of Dorlodot — The 
fundamentalists and the modernists of 450 B. C., Aischylus 
and Job — The hieroglyphics of paleontology — Discovery 
of the Stone Age in central Asia — The homeland of an alert 
race — The prehistory of religion. 


HREE years ago William Jennings Bryan 
made a pledge which he has not fulfilled. 
This pledge was published on the Lord’s Day, 
February 26, 1922, and was read by a million 
people. It was so sincere in tone and was ac- 
companied by so earnest a statement that I 
for one took it at its face value and, trusting 
that the pledge would be kept, published on 
the following Sunday, March 5, a solemn 
reply entitled “Evolution and Religion.” 

I call attention to the character of this 
pledge: Truth ws truth and must prevail. 
Many of my scientific friends ask me: ““Why 
answer Bryan?” I reply that to me Bryan is 
not an individual; he is a type. He presents 


the Gospel to thousands of Americans all over 
95 


96 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the land who are convinced by his sermons 
that there is some antagonism between the 
Creator and His Creation, between God and 
Nature. 

Bryan’s gospel is not a truth; it is an ill- 
starred state of opinion, disastrous to true re- 
ligion, disastrous to morals, disastrous to edu- 
cation. As recently as January 30, 1925, we 
read in the daily paper: 


TENNESSEE LIKES BRYAN 


ANTI-EVOLUTIONISTS PASS BILL BARRING THEORIES 
IN SCHOOLS 


Nashville, Tenn., Jan. 28.—The lower house of 
the Tennessee General Assembly, voting 71 to 5, 
passed a bill prohibiting the teaching of evolu- 
tion in the common schools. 


A NEW INQUISITION 


The actual effect of this bill is the declara- 
tion by the legislature of one of our oldest and 
finest States that the Truth must not be 
taught in the schools of the State. Since 
500 B. C. such legislation has repeatedly come 
from ecclesiastical assemblies and from in- 


IN EDUCATION 97 


quisitorial chambers but never before in the 
history of mankind from a legislative as- 
sembly such as that of the State of Tennes- 
see. That such an inquisition should arise in 
the United States is almost incredible; that 
teachers in the schools of Tennessee should 
be compelled to deny the truths taught by 
Nature or lose their means of livelihood puts 
the State back exactly four centuries to the 
inquisitorial period of Spanish history. 


THE WORDS OF DORLODOT 


Let us commend to these new inquisitors, 
misled by Bryan, the enlightened words of 
Canon H. de Dorlodot, D.D., D.Sc., delegate 
from the Catholic University of Louvain, Bel- 
gium, on the occasion of the Darwinian Cen- 
tenary at Cambridge: 


It is no exaggeration to say that, in showing 
us a creation more grandiose than we had ever 
suspected it, Charles Darwin completed the work 
of Isaac Newton; because, for all those whose 
ears are not incapable of hearing, Darwin was the 
interpreter of the organic world, just as Newton 
was the voice from heaven come to tell us of the 
glory of the Creator, and to proclaim that the 


98 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


universe is a work truly worthy of His hand. And 
of these two illustrious interpreters of nature, 
who were nurtured by your glorious university, 
it is permissible to say with the psalmist: 


“There is no speech nor language, where thetr voice 
is not heard. 
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and 
their words to the end of the world.””} 


ZESCHYLUS AND JOB 


Inasmuch as there can be no antagonism 
between the Creator and His Creation, denial 
of the truths of Nature is atheism disguised 
as religion. It is an extremely ancient form 
of atheism, of which we have written records 
as far back as five centuries B. C. These rec- 
ords we find in the two greatest epics of hu- 
man suffermg—the Book of Job and the 
‘Prometheus Bound” of Auschylus. 

The Book of Job, dating back to 450 B. C., 
is contemporary with “Prometheus Bound” 
of the years between 467 and 458 B. C. Job 
- contains the reflections of the earliest Hebrew 
or Semitic writer on the relations of God to 


1 “Darwinism and Catholic Thought,” Canon de Dorlodot, p. 177. 


IN EDUCATION 99 


Nature, of Nature to Man. While earlier 
books of the Bible, from those of Moses, 1300-— 
1200 B. C., to the Psalms, which were col- 
lected, edited, and in large part composed be- 
tween 520 and 150 B. C., are full of the in- 
spiration and glory of Nature, Job is the first 
to enjoin the scientific study of Nature. He 
presses his admonitions by a long and elo- 
quent survey of the wonders of the earth, of 
the sea, and of the heavens, which baffle hu- 
man understanding; he finds the universe full 
of order, of perfect adaptation to environ- 
ment, and of beauty, full of lessons and teach- 
ings to man. Bildad combats Job’s idea of 
the perfection of creation and declares that 
the Creator is so superior to His handiwork 
that even “the stars are not pure in His sight” 
(Job 25:5)! 

God rebukes both Bildad and Job and de- 
clares that Nature is the direct expression of 
His power and wisdom. In this declaration 
and in the Psalms are the foundations of true 
theism and true religion. Our moral and spiri- 
tual nature is strengthened, not weakened, by 
the spiritual and moral struggle for existence. 


100 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


In our perpetual search for Truth we may 
remind the Bildads and the Bryans of the 
world of the rebuke of the Lord: “Then the 
Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and 
said: Who is this that darkeneth counsel by 
words without knowledge? (38:1, 2).... 
Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty 
instruct him? He that reproveth God, let 
him answer it (40:2)”; and of Job’s peni- 
tence: “Who is he that hideth counsel with- 
out knowledge? therefore have I uttered that 
I understood not; things too wonderful for 
me, which I knew not (42: 2, 3).” 

The spirit of scientific inquiry seems to 
have pervaded the atmosphere 500 B. C.; 
it was doubtless a subject of discussion among 
intellectual lights all around the Mediter- 
ranean. Also in the atmosphere, in the sup- 
posed interest of religion, was the spirit of 
repression of scientific inquiry. In Greece at 
the time, inquiry into the truths of Nature 
was regarded as atheistic and therefore punish- 
able by the gods. 

Undoubtedly William Jennings Bryan had 
his prototypes 500 B. C., who through oratory 


IN EDUCATION 101 


and an appeal to an offended Olympus made 
the way of questioning the earth very difficult. 
The whole essence of “‘Prometheus Bound”’ is 
the dire punishment of Prometheus for having 
dared to promote the welfare of man through 
the scientific exploration of the earth. Pro- 
metheus is the personification of inquiry into 
the laws of Nature for the welfare of man. 
After a glorious recital of the rise of man 
through discoveries in astronomy, in archi- 
tecture, In mining, in medicine, Prometheus 
places foremost the gift to man of reason: 


The miseries of men 
I will recount you, how, mere babes before, 
With reason I endowed them and with mind: 
And not in their disparagement I speak, 
But of my gifts to memorize the love: 
Who, firstly, seeing, knew not what they saw, 
And hearing did not hear; confusedly passed 
Their life-days, lingeringly, like shapes un dreams, 
Without an aim; and neither sunward homes, 
Brick-woven, nor skill of carpentry, they knew; 
But lived, like small ants shaken with a breath, 
In sunless caves a burrowing buried life: 
Of winter’s coming no sure sign had they, 
Nor of the advent of the flowery spring, 
Of fruitful summer none: so fared through each, 


102 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


And took no thought, till that the hidden lore 
Of rising stars and setting I unveiled.’ 


THE HIEROGLYPHICS OF PALAONTOLOGY 


In my reply to Bryan I quoted a verse from 
the Book of Job that has always impressed 
me: Speak to the earth and tt shall teach thee 
(Job 12:8). This admonition of the great 
Shemite and the lofty humanitarianism of 
ZEschylus direct our attention to the fact 
that Nature has been speaking since the dawn 
of humanity in no uncertain tones to those 
minds and hearts which are open to its voice. 
It may be in the earth, it may be in the wind, 
it may be in the earthquake, it may be in the 
fire, or it may be only in the “still small 
voice’’; it may be serious, solemn, awe-inspir- 
ing, and difficult to comprehend, like recent 
marvelous discoveries in physics and astrono- 
my; 1t may be small and apparently insignif- 
icant, while actually profoundly important 
and significant, like many of the discoveries 
in anthropology. To those serious and earnest 
seekers after the Truth, from 500 B.C. to 
the present time, we have the contrasting atti- 


1* Prometheus Bound,” A’schylus. Translation by Robert White- 
law. 


IN EDUCATION 103 


tude of the Great Commoner; if all the evi- 
dence for the Truth were piled as high as Ossa 
upon Pelion, if proof were heaped upon proof, 
the Truth would not prevail with him, be- 
cause all the natural avenues of the Truth are 
tightly closed. 

It is noteworthy that shortly after his 
pledge to accept the Truth appeared in 1922, 
the Earth spoke to Bryan and spoke from 
his own State of Nebraska, in the message 
of a diminutive tooth, the herald of our 
knowledge of anthropoid apes in America. 
This Hesperopithecus tooth is like the “still 
small voice’’; its sound is by no means easy 
to hear. Like the hieroglyphics of Egypt, it 
requires a Rosetta Stone to give the key to 
interpretation. Our Rosetta Stone is com- 
parison with all the similar grinding teeth 
known, collected from all parts of the world, 
and described or figured in learned books and 
illustrations. By these means this little tooth 
speaks volumes of truth—truth consistent 
with all we have known before, with all that 
we have found elsewhere. 

It happens that teeth, incased in enamel, 
the most enduring animal substance in the 


104 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


whole order of living Nature, defy all the 
vicissitudes of time and of subterranean burial 
and take first rank among Nature’s hiero- 
glyphics of the past. 

I once travelled several thousand miles to 
see a single tooth, known to science as Micro- 
lestes antiquus, signifying “the ancient little 
robber.”’ Despite its “rhzetic” age, surpassing 
the hoary antiquity of Jurassic time, this tiny 
tooth, no larger than a pin-head, is shown 
with its ancient enamel lustre and truthfully 
tells an unvarnished tale of the life conditions 
of an epoch in which the “ancient little rob- 
ber”’ flourished. Some years afterward, while 
dining with the Right Reverend William 
Manning, then rector of Trinity Church, I 
sat next the Archbishop of York, the Most 
Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang. Knowing the 
Englishman’s aversion to commonplaces like 
the weather and politics, I at once broached 
the subject of Mucrolestes. I said: “Your 
Grace, do you know why York is so famous?” 
He smiled and replied that he supposed it was 
because of the beauty of its cathedral. “No,” 
I answered, “‘it is because it houses the oldest 


IN EDUCATION 105 


tooth in the world!’ He confessed that he 
had never seen this tooth but would certainly 
on his return to York repair to the museum 
for the purpose. This odontological introduc- 
tion led us genially to the subject of Theodore 
Roosevelt and his Romanes Lecture in Ox- 
ford, as I have narrated elsewhere. 

The world-wide interest aroused by the dis- 
covery in Nebraska of Hesperopithecus, “the 
ape of the western world,” is in widest pos- 
sible contrast to the diminutive and insignif- 
icant appearance of the single grinding tooth 
of the right side of the upper jaw, which speaks 
of the presence of the higher or manlike apes 
in our western country at a time when the 
ancient “Territory of Nebraska”’ was in close 
touch with the animal civilization of Asia and 
of western Europe. The evidence of the tooth | 
is strongly supported by many other and more 
complete fossil specimens that speak of a 
fresh tide of migration from the Old World to 
the New perhaps a million years ago, includ- 
ing antelopes, rhinoceroses, and peculiar Asi- 
atic types of horses. 

So it has been with every other notable dis- 


106 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


covery bearing directly or indirectly upon 
the great question of the origin and evolution 
of man. The earth has buried its secrets as 
if it were reluctant to reveal the history of 
our past. 

What shall we do with the Nebraska tooth ? 
Shall we destroy it because it jars our long 
preconceived notion that the family of man- 
like apes never reached the western world, or 
shall we endeavor to interpret it, to discover 
its real relationship to the apes of Asia and 
of more remote Africa? Or shall we con- 
tinue our excavations, difficult and baffling as 
they are, in the confident hope, inspired by 
the admonition of Job, that if we keep on 
speaking to the earth we shall in time have a 
more audible and distinct reply? Certainly 
we shall not banish this bit of truth because 
it does not fit in with our preconceived notions 
and because at present it constitutes infini- 
tesimal but irrefutable evidence that the man- 
apes wandered over from Asia into North 
America. 


IN EDUCATION 107 


THE STONE AGE IN CENTRAL ASIA 


Moreover, the mystery surrounding the 
discovery of Hesperopithecus is hardly greater 
than those which have been surmounted in 
the prehistory of man elsewhere—in Spain, 
in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Italy, 
in Hungary, in the Island of Java, in the 
Ordos of Inner Mongolia. Just at the moment 
when Asia seemed to have lost its time-honored 
Biblical reputation as the Garden of Eden of 
the human race, two devout Roman Catho- 
lics—the one a distinguished missionary of 
northern China, Pére Emile Licent, the other 
a distinguished palzontologist, Abbé Pierre 
Teilhard de Chardin—made an epoch-making 
discovery of palzeolithic man of Aurignacian 
and Mousterian age in the northern valley of 
the Yellow River bordering China and south- 
ern Mongolia. Flint implements were found 
in the greatest abundance, fashioned after the 
superior Aurignacian technic, which indubita- 
bly established the presence of a large colony 
of men in this now arid region of central Asia 
during the more favorable and humid climate 


108 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
of the closing Ice Age. Skulls and bones of 


these men have not been found, but their flint 
industry speaks of an order of intelligence as 
high as that manifest in the finely formed 
skulls and foreheads of the Aurignacian men 
recently disinterred at Solutré, France. 

Only a few months before, it had been pro- 
claimed by one of the leading American an- 
thropologists, Doctor Ales Hrdlicka, of the 
United States National Museum, that Europe 
rather than Asia may have been the cradle of 
the human race. This proclamation rested on 
the overwhelming testimony of the presence 
of fossil man in all parts of western Europe, 
discoveries dating from the first ancient flint 
implement found in 1690, and extending over 
233 years to the sepulchres of Aurignacian 
man found in 1923 near Solutré, France. 

This discovery of the Old Stone Age in 
north China is consistent with the discovery 
of the Neolithic or New Stone Age culture 
about three years ago in China, as revealed 
by the Swedish explorer, J. M. Andersson, 
who has now been called to the University 
of Stockholm. It is also in accord with the 


IN EDUCATION 109 


prophecies of W. D. Matthew and of the pres- 
ent writer that the high plateau region of 
central Asia will prove to be the chief cradle 
of the human race. 


THE HOMELAND OF AN ALERT RACE 


It is upon plateaus and relatively level up- 
lands that human and prehuman life is most 
exacting and response to stimulus most bene- 
ficial. An alert race cannot develop in a for- 
est—a forested country can never be a centre 
of ascent for man; nor can the higher type of 
man develop in a lowland river-bottom coun- 
try with plentiful food and luxuriant vegeta- 
tion. Mongolia has always been an upland 
country, through the Age of Mammals and 
before. It was probably a country only in 
part forested, mainly open, with exhilarating 
climate and conditions sufficiently difficult to 
require healthy exertion in obtaining food- 
supply. In the uplands of Mongolia condi- 
tions of life were apparently ideal for the de- 
velopment of early man, and since all the evi- 
dence points to Asia as the place of origin of 
man, and as Mongolia and Tibet, the top of 


110 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the world, are the most favorable geographic 
regions in Asia for such an event, we shall 
sooner or later find the remote ancestors of 
man in this section of the country. 

This idea may be treated only as an opin- 
ion, but it is an opinion sufficiently sound to 
warrant the extended investigation now go- 
ing forward, and which is to be continued for 
the next five years under the leadership of 
Roy Chapman Andrews in the hope of finding 


evidence of primitive man in central Asia.! 


THE PREHISTORY OF RELIGION 


Man is what he is because he has never had 
an easy time of it; for at least 500,000 years 
he has been engaged in an incessant struggle 
for existence, a struggle in which his intel- 
ligence and his moral nature have played a 
very large part, certainly the predominating 


1In a cable, dated Peking, June 1, 1925, Roy Chapman Andrews 
announced: “‘Great success. Immediately discovered more dinosaur eggs 
and late Paleolithic [Old Stone Age] cultures, corresponding to Euro- 
pean Azilian [Upper Paleolithic stage]. Thousands flints, artifacts. 
Work just begun.” This first definite proof of the existence of men 
of the Old Stone Age on the high Mongolian plateau, taken together 
with the discovery of the Old Stone Age man in northern China, tends 
to strongly confirm the theory that the high central Asiatic plateau 
was one of the chief homes of primitive man. 


IN EDUCATION 111 


part in the higher races of man. The spiritual 
life of man, as will be more fully pointed out 
in another chapter, had its dawn extremely 
far back in geologic time, and belief in life 
after death was an early development. Re- 
ligion, in the sense of belief in a supernatural 
power or powers, followed later and was ac- 
companied by superstition, magic, and the 
creation of a priesthood as intermediaries be- 
tween man and the higher powers. 

The primitive spiritual life of man is no 
longer a matter of guesswork and hypothesis, 
as it was at the close of the nineteenth century 
when Herbert Spencer and Edward B. Tylor 
were theorizing upon the origin of religion. 
Through the religious practices and cere- 
monials of the existing peoples, the prehistory 
of religion comes to us in no uncertain tones 
when we speak to the earth, in stone amulets 
and charms, in ceremonial burials full of ten- 
der human sentiment, in sculptures, paintings, 
and engravings, in primitive written texts 
which we some time may be able to decipher. 
Some of these records go back over 50,000 
years, when the custom of burial began; others 


112 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


are of more recent date, belonging to the sec- 
ond cave period. 

The truth of the records which the earth re- 
veals 1s truth of the most imperishable order, 
and w% must prevail. It may inconvenience us, 
ut may disturb us, ut may completely upset many 
of our scientific rdeas, 1 may run counter to 
our religious views; our duty 1s not to avoid the 
consequences of the truth but to face them and 
overcome them. 


VI 
THE TENNESSEE TRIAL 


The Tennessee trial becomes the peak of the controversy 
and immediately attracts the attention of the entire civilized 
world. A subject of ridicule in the unthinking press, it is taken 
with great seriousness by some of the most distinguished 
scientific teachers. The fundamentalists summon their most 
eloquent leader to the attack, while the radicals array them- 
selves on the side of the defense. The trial consequently takes 
its place as the latest of the many great struggles between sci- 
ence and theology. 

In this chapter, which was hurriedly written and printed 
on the very eve of the trial, it is sought to show the real sig- 
nificance of the Scopes trial, its historic position, and to point 
out in advance that the real defendant is not the young 
‘Tennessee teacher. 


THE TENNESSEE TRIAL 


Giordano Bruno and Galileo; the seventeenth and twen- 
tieth centuries — Bryan the real defendant, Scopes the real 
plaintiff — Distinction between educational liberty and li- 
cense — Difficult for Bryan to unseat a well-established law 
of Nature — The testimony of the rocks — The travail of a 
million centuries — Man not the descendant of an ape— 
Our superior ancestry — The still small voice — The crea- 
tive evolution of man. 


HERE is a wide difference of opinion in 
the United States, and even in other 
parts of the civilized world, about the Ten- 
nessee trial. Most people express themselves 
as strongly opposed to it. I for one am strongly 
in favor of it, and I am confident that it will 
clear the atmosphere, as in the past great his- 
toric trials of a similar character have done. 


GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO 


Fortunately, we have reached a stage of 
civilization where there is no question of burn- 
ing at the stake, as with Giordano Bruno, or 


of imprisonment, as with Galileo when he de- 
115 


116 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


clared that the earth revolved around the sun 
and that the sun itself was in motion. In the 
Tennessee case even the distinguished plain- 
tiff declares that the defendant will lose only 
his living; he will not be thrown into prison, 
he will not be excommunicated, he certainly 
will not be burned at the stake. Beginning in 
1593, Giordano Bruno was imprisoned for 
seven years, and on February 17, 1600, was 
burned at the stake for firmly holding to his 
chief maxim that “the investigation of Na- 
ture in the unbiased light of reason is our only 
guide to truth.”’ Beginning June 24, 1633, 
Galileo Galilei, at the age of seventy, was 
imprisoned and later kept in close confine- 
ment for adhering to his theory of the motions 
of the earth and of the sun as against the 
orthodox astronomical teaching of his times. 


BRYAN THE REAL DEFENDANT, SCOPES 
THE REAL PLAINTIFF 


The reason I am in favor of this trial is that 
I take a view entirely different from that of 
most of my fellow citizens as to who is really 
on trial, as to which is the plaintiff and which 


IN EDUCATION 117 


the defendant in the case. The facts in this 
great case are that William Jennings Bryan is 
the man on trial; John Thomas Scopes is not 
the man on trial. If the case is properly set 
before the jury, Scopes will be the real plain- 
tiff, Bryan will be the real defendant. 

The brief in this case was best phrased by 
Bryan himself with his usual terseness and 
clearness when he opened this discussion in 
one of the great American newspapers in the 
year of our Lord 1922: 


“The Real Question Is, Did God Use Evolution 
as His Plan?” 


This is the supreme issue which the Ten- 
nessee court and the judge and jury will have 
to pass upon. All the other issues, such as 
personal rights, rights of opinion, rights of 
free speech, constitutional rights, educational 
liberty, which will undoubtedly be brought 
into the case by the counsel on both sides and 
which may for a time befuddle the minds of 
the jurors, are mere temporary side issues and 
will fade into insignificance in comparison 
with the supreme issue. 


118 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


EDUCATIONAL LIBERTY AND LICENSE 


If Scopes has been teaching the truth to his 
students he will win; if he has been teaching 
untruths he will lose, and will deserve to lose. 
I am a great believer in educational liberty, 
but I do not believe that any teacher, high 
or low, should pass off his personal opinions 
on the tender minds of students; he is at lib- 
erty only to teach truths which are well and 
soundly established. In this case the evolu- 
tion of higher and of lower forms of life is as 
well and as soundly established as the eternal 
hills. f¢ has long since ceased to be a theory; 
us a law of Nature as universal in living 
things as 1s the law of gravitation in material 
things and in the motions of the heavenly spheres. 


DIFFICULT FOR BRYAN TO UNSEAT, A LAW 
OF NATURE 


If Bryan and his learned counsel can prove 
that God did not use evolution as His plan 
they will deserve our gratitude, and William 
Jennings Bryan will come out of the court one 
of the saviors of American youth; if, on the 


IN EDUCATION 119 


other hand, the affirmative decision is reached 
and it is shown by the learned counsel for the 
defense that God did use evolution as His 
plan, then John Thomas Scopes will walk out 
of court a free man, the governor and legis- 
lature of the State of Tennessee will convene 
to revise their recent legislation, and William 
Jennings Bryan will suffer a greater defeat 
than any he has had at the polls. Not only 
will Scopes be free, but Truth will be free, and 
the truths of Nature as distinguished from the 
transitory opinions of either scientist or theo- 
logian will be freely taught to the youth of 
our nation. 

Thus Haman will hang on the gallows erected 
for Mordecai! 

Nor will the twelve honest, God-fearing 
Tennesseeans who are put on oath in the Day- 
ton court constitute the whole jury; a higher 
jury will be the grand jurors of all created 
time, whose voices are heard in the testimony 
of the rocks, in which the injunction is ob- 
served: “Speak to the earth and it shall 
teach thee.” (Job 12: 8.) 


120 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS 


“Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
sheweth knowledge.”’ (Psalm 19:2.) 


Tue Earta Speaks, clearly, distinctly, 
and, in many of the realms of Nature, loudly, 
to William Jennings Bryan, but he fazls to 
hear a single sound. The earth speaks from 
the remotest periods in its wonderful life his- 
tory in the Archzeozoic Age, when it reveals 
only a few tissues of its primitive plants. 
Fifty million years ago it begins to speak as 
“the waters bring forth abundantly the mov- 
ing creature that hath life.” In successive 
eons of time the various kinds of animals 
leave their remains in the rocks which com- 
pose the deeper layers of the earth, and when 
the rocks are laid bare by wind, frost, and 
storm we find wondrous lines of ascent in- 
variably following the principles of creative 
evolution, whereby the simpler and more lowly 
forms always precede the higher and more 
specialized forms. 

The earth speaks not of a succession of dis- 
tinct creations but of a continuous ascent, in 


IN EDUCATION 121 


which, as the millions of years roll by, increas- 
ing perfection of structure and beauty of form 
are found; out of the water-breathing fish 
arises the air-breathing amphibian; out of the 
land-living amphibian arises the land-living, 
air-breathing reptile, these two kinds of creep- 
ing things resembling each other closely. The 
earth speaks loudly and clearly of the ascent 
of the bird from one kind of reptile and of 
the mammal from another kind of reptile. 

This is not perhaps the way Bryan would 
have made the animals, but this is the way 
God made them! 


THE TRAVAIL OF A MILLION CENTURIES 


After the long travail of at least a million 
centuries there appear among the mammals 
the remote and humble ancestors of that great 
race which we ourselves have honored with 
the name of Primates because all the members 
of this race, like ourselves, live upon their 
wits, relying upon their cleverness and even 
intelligence in the eternal struggle for exist- 
ence. In clarion tones, not with uncertain 
sound, the earth tells us in both the form and 


122 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the functions of our bodies and of our minds, 
in every nerve, in every gland, in every muscle 
which the nerves control, in the lower and 
higher centres of the brain as the royal seat 
of our primacy, in the bones which compose 
our framework, especially in the bones of the 
skull and jaws and of the foot and hand, that 
we too have ascended from lowlier ancestors 
not wholly dissimilar but never identical with 
other Primates to which we feel ourselves 
proudly superior. Let us regard them as 
“poor relations”’ if we will, they are none the 
less of the same handiwork as ourselves. 

In Darwin’s day the earth had hardly be- 
gun to speak of this relationship of ours to 
the other Primates, but Darwin’s was the 
prophet’s ear, close to the earth, which truly 
interpreted its feeble tones. Today the earth 
speaks with resonance and clearness, and 
every ear in every civilized country of the 
world is attuned to its wonderful message of 
the creative evolution of man, except the ear 
of William Jennings Bryan; he alone remains 
stone-deaf, he alone by his own resounding 
voice drowns the eternal speech of Nature. 


IN EDUCATION 123 


How can I as the author of these essays, a 
naturalist, a professor of zoology, “‘a tall pro- 
fessor coming down out of the trees,” as he 
calls me, contend with the resounding voice 
of Bryan when the voices of Nature are power- 
less to do so? At once I confess that I cannot 
contend with him, nor can [I still his voice, 
and this has always been my attitude since 
February, 1922, when in reply to his article 
in the New York Times entitled “God and 
Evolution,”’ I hastily wrote the first of my 
rejoinders, “Evolution and Religion,” and 
thus entered the arena of Religion and Science 
in which the Great Commoner and myself 
have met at intervals during the past three 
years. My advice to my opponent is invari- 
ably and consistently the same; namely, to 
drop the methods of the lawyer, of the politi- 
cian, of the statesman, even of the theologian 
and of the scientist, and to adopt the simple 
methods of the naturalist, to observe and hear 
for himself the great truths which the earth 
so clearly proclaims. 

I do not enter into the well-known details 
of the wonderful processes of evolution as they 


124 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


have been conscientiously observed in plants 
and animals for a century and a half. I refer 
inquirers after truth to the published and 
readily accessible works of a long line of ob- 
servers, from Leonardo da Vinci in the fif- 
teenth century to the writers of the eleventh 
edition of the Encyclopzedia Britannica. 


MAN NOT THE DESCENDANT OF AN APE 


As for the creative evolution of man, pass- 
ing by the early speculative writings of such 
men as Haeckel, we now have more than a 
dozen substantial volumes based not upon 
guesswork or speculation but upon the testi- - 
mony yielded in the superficial layers of the 
earth and in caves, embracing hundreds of 
specimens of the fossilized remains of man, 
more or less ancient, more or less complete, 
but invariably, without a single exception, 
testifying to the gradual ascent of man from a 
lower to a higher state, gradually dropping 
one primitive bit of anatomy after another 
until the high, intelligent, fully human aspect 
is attained. 

Again with clarion voice these irrefutable 


IN EDUCATION 125 


witnesses of our past positively demonstrate 
two new and somewhat unexpected truths: 
first, that man has not descended from any 
known kind of monkey or ape, fossil or recent; 
with this truth, established not by Bryan but 
by the testimony of the earth, one of the chief 
sentimental objections to the creative evolu- 
tion of man disappears forever. Second, man 
has a long, independent, superior line of ascent 
of his own, with a relatively erect posture, 
with hands free to grasp and use tools, with 
the thumb and forefinger capable of handling 
flint implements such as the graving tools 
and brush of the artist and, finally, the reed, 
pen, or crayon, with which to set down his 
thoughts. Challenge as we may the less per- 
fect fossil discoveries in the Trinil sands, in 
the Piltdown gravels, in the Heidelberg river- 
beds, no man can challenge the convincing 
testimony to the creative evolution of man 
afforded by the several complete skeletons of 
the race of the Neanderthal who lived 100,000 
years ago, nor the perfectly preserved fossil 
remains of the artistic race of the Cré- 
Magnons who lived 30,000 years ago. 


126 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


OUR SUPERIOR ANCESTRY 


The Neanderthal hunters of 100,000 years 
ago and the Cré-Magnon artists of 30,000 
years ago are not guesswork or the fabric of 
scientific imagination; they are realities, men 
like ourselves, the older one a much lower 
race—a, veritable missing link—the other a 
higher race with all powers equal to our own. 

At the time these fossilized artists of the 
higher Cré-Magnon race lived along the river 
borders of France all of northern Europe was 
sinking under the burden of the titanic glacier 
which covered Belgium and northern France 
and which drove southward great herds of the 
reindeer, the woolly rhinoceros, the Arctic 
hares and lemmings. These artists painted 
and modelled in clay and rock the fossil- 
ized mammoths, and no circumstantial evi- 
dence produced in court at any time in the 
whole history of law has ever been stronger 
than this evidence that these artists, these 
reindeer, and these mammoths lived together 
in the subarctic climate of southern France 
and northern Spain. 


IN EDUCATION 127 


The low-browed Neanderthal hunting race is 
of far greater antiquity, a fact also established 
by circumstantial evidence equally strong and 
equally convincing. When these men hunted 
the woolly rhinoceros in the half-frozen rivers 
of southern France the titanic glaciers of the 
northern hemisphere reached their arms south- 
ward from the Scandinavian peaks and from 
the central and eastern (Laurentian) high- 
lands of Canada, attaining such height and 
massiveness as to completely bury the entire 
State of New York, finally reaching their 
melting-point near the western extremity of 
Long Island and the centre of the State of 
New Jersey. This fossilized hunting race of 
the Neanderthals, low-browed, small-statured, 
ungainly, hideous of aspect, with retreating 
chin, broad nostrils, beetling eyebrows, is 
nevertheless human, beyond challenge. They 
had tender sentiments, they revered their 
dead, they believed in the future existence of 
the hunter in “happy hunting-grounds,” as 
evidenced in their inclusion of the finest flint 
implements in the burial of their dead. 

To sum up the testimony of the rocks, the 


128 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


evidence as regards the creative evolution of 
man is as unanswerable as that of the creative 
evolution of the entire plant and animal world. 
Man is no exception to the universal law that 
God did use evolution as His plan. 


THE STILL SMALL VOICE 


And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount be- 
fore the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a 
great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in 
pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in 
the wind : and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord 
was not in the earthquake: 

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in 
the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (I Kings 19: 
11, 12.) 


Does Evolution still the voice of conscience ? 
Does it rob us of our religion? Does it under- 
mine our morals? If taught in the schools and 
colleges as Nature teaches it, will it under- 
mine the spiritual and moral foundations and 
ideals of our youth, upon which our future 
American civilization depends? 

This is the contention of Bryan and of the 
millions of people whom he has deceived by 
his eloquent references to the Bible as the 
source of scientific as well as of religious 


IN EDUCATION 129 


truth. On this side of the case I find myself in 
sympathy with much of Bryan’s teaching and 
preaching. I agree with many of his moral 
conclusions, I totally disagree with his prem- 
ises. Our points of agreement may be clearly 
set forth as follows: we both believe in the 
Bible and in its supreme value in moral and 
religious instruction; we both believe in Chris- 
tianity and in the principles of conduct set 
forth in the Sermon on the Mount; we both 
believe that in the future of our country we 
must retain the faith of our fathers in the 
providence of God. 

Our points of disagreement, so far as I 
understand the Great Commoner, are chiefly 
as follows: 


Bryan BELIEVES 
that the Bible is the infallible 


source of natural as well as 
spiritual knowledge 


that the entire universe was 
suddenly created in 144 
hours, according to literal 
interpretation of the first 
chapter of Genesis 


that on the sixth day man in 
the fulness of his powers was 


OsBorn BELIEVES 
that the Bible is an infallible 


source of spiritual and moral 
knowledge 


that our entire universe and 
the universes beyond our own 
represent an incalculably long 
period of development to 
their present form 


that the life of our planet 
represents an _ incalculably 


130 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Bryan BELIEVES OsBorRN BELIEVES 


suddenly created, according long period of creative evo- 
to Genesis 1:27: So God _ lution which was crowned 
created man in his own with the ascent of man; that 
image, in the image of God man approaches the divine 
created he him; male and_ through a gradual develop- 
female created he them. ment of his spiritual, moral, 
and intellectual faculties. 


THE CREATIVE EVOLUTION OF MAN 


It is not possible to express in human lan- 
guage, in human conceptions, or even in hu- 
man imagination the majestic processes of the 
universe, nor is it possible to interpret all 
the causes of the creative evolution of man. 

Neither is this the moment to discuss more 
than the remaining point at issue: Does the 
idea of creative evolution tend to elevate or 
to degrade man? This issue has also been 
the work of ages of philosophy, going back 
to the early stages of human thought, cer- 
tainly as far back as 600 B.C. 

As I point out in Chapter II, the Christian 
Fathers considered this very question with 
consummate ability. As I attempt to show in 
Chapter III, a true conception of evolution 
compels us to adopt the highest ideals of con- 


renner 


IN EDUCATION 131 


duct. Finally, I attempt to show in Chapter 
IV that, apart from the spiritual guidance of 
the Bible, Nature has been regarded from the 
earliest times as the work of God, full of moral 
beauty, truth, and splendor. 


7 - L 
AOR 
a. a 

, 





Vil 


THE CASE FOR HUMAN EVOLUTION 
IN 1925 


The editor of the New York Times prefaced this article 
(July 12, 1925) with the following comment: 

The topic of the moment is, of course, evolution. William 
Jennings Bryan, who is playing a leading part at the Scopes 
trial at Dayton, Tenn., put the issue sharply when he sard evo- 
lution 1s “‘guesses strung together,” and again: “‘ These men (the 
evolutionists) would destroy the Bible on evidence that would 
not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor.” 

Thus i becomes of great interest to inquire, as the trial gets 
under way: “‘What concretely 1s the evidence for evolution?” 
The New York Times asked Doctor Osborn, President of the 
Museum of Natural History and foremost in the ranks of the 
evolutionists, to answer that question. He has done so in the 
following article. 


THE CASE FOR HUMAN EVOLUTION 
IN 1925 


Bryan contra mundum — The testimony of anatomy, old- 
est of the sciences — The ape no longer in the line of human 
descent — Man in a very ancient family of his own — A long 
and honorable line of ascent — The recently discovered Fox- 
hall man — Prediction of the erect-walking position of the 
Tertiary Dawn Man — Summary of our knowledge of the 
fossil races of man — Probable Asiatic centre of origin and 
dispersal of the human race. 


Y a gross perversion of the truth the pres- 
ent Tennessee case has taken on all over 
the United States the contemptuous designa- 
tion of “the monkey trial,” a term applied to 
it even by two of the great New York dailies. 
Against the acceptance by the newspaper- 
reading public of Bryan’s definition of human 
evolution I vigorously protest, as lowering the 
seriousness of this case not only in the United 
States but throughout the world. 
I present an epitome of our present knowl- 
edge of the evolution of man and of several 


great generalizations which have been reached 
135 


136 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


only in recent years. The first of these is that 
man belongs to a family of his own, called the 
Hominide (from the Latin word homo), a 
family including only the relatives of man, 
the actual ancestors of the existing races of 
man, and the side branches of the human 
race, such as the Piltdown, the Trinil, and the 
Neanderthal, which have become entirely ex- 
tinct. | 

Entirely apart from this human family is 
the Simade (Latin sumia, ape), including the 
living and extinct anthropoid apes—the go- 
rilla, the chimpanzee, the orang, the gibbon. 
These animals constitute a separate branch of 
the great division of primates not only in- 
ferior to the Hominide, but totally discon- 
nected from the human family from its earliest 
history. 


“BRYAN CONTRA MUNDUM”’ 


Testut, the great French anatomist, com- 
pared the anatomy of man with the slave who 
followed the chariot of the Roman emperor 
in the period of imperial self-deification. The 
slave was engaged by the Roman Senate to 


IN EDUCATION 137 


keep repeating in the ear of the emperor the 
admonition, “‘Meminisce te hominum esse”’ 
(Remember thou art but a man). William 
Jennings Bryan, like the Roman emperors, 
insists that he is made in the image of God, 
and if it should prove he is not so made there 
is no hope for religion or for Christianity! Yet 
the anatomy of Bryan, like that of all man- 
kind, is continually testifying: | 


You are only a man, you are full of remi- 
niscences of your great geologic past. Your daily 
and hourly existence depends on nervous, mus- 
cular, vascular, glandular, and skeletal systems 
which were designed not in a few hours but in 
many millions of years. Your own cellular struc- 
ture and development from germ and embryo to 
manhood is a syncopated epitome of your entire 
past history. Every breath you draw, every ac- 
celerated beat of the heart in the emotional periods 
of your oratory depend upon highly elaborated 
physical and chemical reactions and mechanisms 
which nature has been building up through a 
million centuries. | 

If one of these mechanisms, which you owe en- 


stage. Not only this, but some of your noblest 
emotions and deepest sympathies, some of your 


138 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


highest ideals of human fellowship and comrade- 
ship were not created in a moment, but represent 
the work of ages. 


THE TESTIMONY OF ANATOMY 


But the voice of anatomy, like the voice of 
all Nature, never reaches the mental ear of the 
Great Commoner. It is the noble province of 
anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth about the struc- 
ture, the origin, and the history of man. It 
ranks next to astronomy as the oldest of the 
sciences. At the present moment, when the 
evidence of anatomy is ridiculed, misrepre- 
sented and caricatured, there is no exaggera- 
tion in saying that modern anatomy leaves not 
a shadow, not a possibility of doubt, that man 
has ascended from a lower to a higher state, 
and that the universal principle of creative 
evolution has been no less potent in fashioning 
man than in fashioning the entire plant and 
animal world. 

The researches and explorations of a cen- 
tury and a half have yielded not one iota of 
evidence for the special and sudden creation 


IN EDUCATION 139 


of a single organ or a single function in man, 
lower or higher; on the contrary, far beyond 
the dreams of Buffon, Lamarck, and Darwin, 
the three great opponents of the dogma of the 
sudden creation of man, they have yielded an 
overwhelming mass of anatomical and pale- 
ontological evidence for evolution. 

It is the acceptance of this great truth of 
human ascent by men of religious and scien- 
tific beliefs, in all parts of the world, except 
those who have fallen under the spell of orator- 
ical and sophistical misrepresentation, which 
causes me to use the subheading, “Bryan 
contra mundum.” 

My opponent speaks lightly of this over- 
whelming evidence for the evolution of man, 
because he is unfamiliar with scientific evi- 
dence of every kind and because he wilfully 
and deliberately misrepresents the human-evo- 
lution case. To stigmatize the Scopes case as 
a “monkey trial,’’ or as an “ape trial,” and 
thereby to create prejudice to human evolu- 
tion by the distortion of truth, is a demagogic 
appeal which may deceive and bewilder many, 
but which is sixty-six years out of date. Dar- 


140 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


win’s opponents in the decade following the 
publication of “The Descent of Man” (1871) 
used the same demagogic methods, as, when 
he received his honorary degree from the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, a monkey was sus- 
pended in mid-air between the galleries of 
Sanders Theatre. 


THE APE NO LONGER IN THE LINE OF 
HUMAN DESCENT 


By opponents of a somewhat higher grade 
of intelligence strong objection was, and is 
still, made to human descent from any exist- 
ing form of anthropoid ape, such as the chim- 
panzee or the gorilla; quite recently the hu- 
man-descent theory has been stigmatized as 
the “gorilla theory of human ancestry.” All 
this despite the fact that Darwin himself, in 
the days when not a single bit of evidence 
regarding the fossil ancestors of man was rec- 
ognized, distinctly stated that none of the 
known anthropoid apes, much less any of the 
known monkeys, should be considered as in 
any way ancestral to the human stock. 

All these sentimental objections and mis- 


IN EDUCATION 141 


representations are now brushed aside by re- 
search, the results of which confirm the belief 
that no existing form of.anthropoid ape is 
even remotely related to the stock which has 
given rise to man. On the contrary, all 
the existing anthropoid apes—the gorilla, the 
chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon—stand 
far apart by themselves in the family Sima- 
de. ‘They are increasingly specialized for ar- 
boreal life: the arms are much longer than 
the legs in adaptation to swinging from the 
branches of trees, the thumb has practically 
disappeared as it does in all animals expert 
in tree progression, the hind limbs are cor- 
respondingly shortened and the big toe is 
greatly enlarged and set off from the side of 
the foot. 

When on the ground the apes are quadru- 
pedal in gait and rise only temporarily on the 
hind feet. Stories of travellers about the bi- 
pedal progression and erect position of these 
anthropoid apes, and even the diagrams of 
Haeckel representing them walking on their 
hind feet, are myths or gross misrepresenta- 
tions of the accustomed gaits and postures of 


142 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


these tree-living apes. Even the gorilla, the 
least arboreal of these anthropoids, has been 
recently shown by Carl E. Akeley to be essen- 
tially quadrupedal in locomotion; it rises on 
its hind feet only when startled or when await- 
ing the attack of an enemy. 

Thus the entire monkey-ape theory of hu- 
man descent, which Bryan and his followers 
are attacking, is a pure fiction, set up as a 
scarecrow, which has been entirely set aside 
by modern anatomical research. All these ani- 
mals ape or imitate man, as implied in both 
the native and scientific names given to them, 
rather than the reverse; none of them is any- 
where near the true line of human ascent. 
Nevertheless, anatomists and zoologists from 
the time of Buffon onward were entirely right 
In pointing out that the anthropoid apes alone 
among all other mammals belong in a family 
(Semide) closest of kin to man (Hominide) 
in their cerebral, dental, muscular and bony 
structure, and, as has been more recently 
proved, in the chemical composition of their 
blood as well as in the physiological reactions 


of their glands. 


IN EDUCATION 143 


MAN IN AN ANCIENT FAMILY OF HIS OWN 


Setting entirely aside these abandoned ape- 
monkey hypotheses of descent, modern anat- 
omy, anthropology, and paleontology are 
demonstrating in the most irrefutable manner 
that man has a long and independent line of 
family ascent of his own reaching far back 
to the Age of Man through the Pleistocene, 
Pliocene, and even Miocene epochs into Up- 
per Oligocene time, a geologic period esti- 
mated not in hundreds of thousands but in 
millions of years. 

The new evidence for this entire indepen- 
dence from the apes of the human line of 
ascent has come with almost startling sud- 
denness. Some years ago, when addressing the 
National Academy of Sciences in Washington, 
I stated that we must prepare our minds for a 
very great surprise, namely, the discovery of 
a distinctively human type in Pliocene time 
(over 500,000 years ago). This prediction was 
independently and immediately verified by the 
discovery by J. Reid Moir in a quarry at Fox- 
hall, near Bristol, England, of an ancient fire- 


144 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


place on the floor of a flint workshop where 
fire had been used, in which were found a 
number of flints of indubitable human manu- 
facture, roughly chipped for a variety of use- 
ful purposes, in a definite geologic stratum 
shown positively to be of Phocene age, be- 
cause among the fossil mammals which it con- 
tained were very ancient Pliocene rhinoceroses 
and mastodons. 


THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED FOXHALL MAN 


Thus was found the Foxhall man, the first 
of Tertiary Age! This discovery was received 
with such scepticism in England that it re- 
quired the support which I gave it in the Lon- 
don Times as well as that of the two leaders in 
the prehistoric archeology of France, Profes- 
sor Louis Capitan and Abbé Henri Breuil, to 
establish it. We have not yet found the skull 
or limbs of the Foxhall man of the close of the 
Age of Mammals; he is known only by the tools 
he made, but these tools prove beyond a pos- 
sibility of doubt three things: (1) He had a 
powerful and opposable thumb with which he 
grasped small flints; (2) he had a brain of con- 


IN EDUCATION 145 


siderable size with which he or his ancestors 
discovered the arts of fire, of the chase, and of 
the preparation of clothing; (3) he certainly 
walked erect or nearly so, for only in the erect 
running posture could he have entered the 
chase, and only by the free use of his hands 
and thumbs could he have grasped the imple- 
ments and fashioned the tools essential to the 
chase. 


PREDICTION OF ERECT WALKING POSITION 
OF THE DAWN MAN 


I am now prepared to make a still more 
startling prediction, namely, that man has 
been in an erect position for an enormously 
long period of geologic time; that when we 
discover the earlier Pliocene ancestors of man, 
still more remote than the Foxhall, we shall 
find that they had long lower limbs, relatively 
short upper limbs, well-developed thumbs, 
larger brains than any of their contempora- 
ries, and that they habitually lived on the 
ground rather than in trees. Far back of this 
ground-living habit doubtless was the tree- 
living stage. 


146 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


SUMMARY OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
FOSSIL RACES OF MAN 


Here is the table of known fossil ancestors 
of man in descending geologic order: 

Cré-Magnon Race—Large brain, full brow, 
prominent chin; existing 25,000-40,000 years 
ago. Second type of cave man. 

Neanderthal and Heidelberg Race—Low 
brow, inferior brain, retreating chin; existing 
40,000-250,000 years ago. First type of cave 
man was of the Neanderthal race. 

Piltdown Race (Hoanthropus)—Flat brow, 
small brain, no chin prominence; existing 
500,000 years ago, or near the beginning of 
the Age of Man. 

Trinil Race (Pithecanthropus erectus)—Ex- 
tremely low brow, smaller brain, probably re- 
treating chin, straight thigh-bone. Very primi- 
tive side branch of human race nearly con- 
temporary in age with the Piltdown; not an 
anthropoid. 

Foxhall Race—Bony remains still unknown; 
possibly similar to Piltdown in head structure. 


The second, the Trinil race of the Age of 


IN EDUCATION 147 


Man, discovered by Eugen Dubois in Java, is 
now positively known to be of very great geo- 
logic antiquity, namely, at the very base of - 
the Age of Man, and therefore belonging to 
a geologic stage more recent than the Fox- 
hall man. Although Dubois named this man 
Pithecanthropus erectus, signifying the “erect 
ape-man,” he was less certain about its rela- 
tionship to the real human stock than we are 
at present, because when he wrote his original 
paper the prehuman characters of the brain, 
as revealed by the inner side of the bony 
brain-case, were not so well known as they 
are now. Recently we have received in the 
American Museum perfect casts not only of 
the top of the skull but what is known as an 
intracranial cast or replica of the brain itself. 

This brain is certainly prehuman and not 
pre-anthropoid. Not only is it much larger 
than the brain of any anthropoid ape, but in 
its convolutions it is distinctly on the side of 
the human family (Hominide@) rather than on 
the side of the ape family (Simzde). The 
femur, moreover, belongs not to a tree-living, 
but to a ground-living and running type; this 


148. EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


feature is implied in the specific name erectus 
applied by Dubois to his genus Pithecanthro- 
pus. 'These remains indicate a side branch of 
the human family not in the least related to 
the Piltdown race, but with affinities, in the 
structure of the brow, rather to the Neander- 
thaloids of Heidelberg and of Neanderthal. 
The third, or Piltdown, race, of the close of 
the Age of Mammals or beginning of the Age 
of Man, after a long period of most animated 
dispute about the characters of the jaw and 
as to whether or not it belonged with the skull, 
is now definitely determined as a very im- 
portant side branch of the Hominide. The 
veteran palzontologist of England, Arthur 
Smith Woodward, spent no less than ten years 
in searching through the Piltdown gravels on 
the spot where the Piltdown man was found, 
in order to further establish the characters of 
the type, which he named Koanthropus daw- 
sont. I visited this locality myself in com- 
pany with my friend Smith Woodward, and 
on looking over the ground felt absolutely as- 
sured for the first time that the jaw did be- 
long with the skull, although it looks far more 


IN EDUCATION 149 


like that of a chimpanzee than that of a hu- 
man being. 
_ The existence of the fourth, or Heidelberg- 
Neanderthal, race in western Europe is prob- 
ably heralded by gigantic flint implements re- 
cently discovered by J. Reid Moir near Cromer 
on the east coast of England in the ‘‘ Cromer 
Forest Bed,” and determined by the French 
archeologists Capitan and Breuil as represent- 
ing an aneient phase of the so-called Chellean 
industry, named from its discovery near 
Chelles in northern France. No human re- 
mains are preserved with these giant flints, 
but of nearly the same geologic age is the mas- 
sive jaw found in the Mauer sands near Heidel- 
berg, Germany, by Schoetensack and named 
Homo heidelbergensis. This Heidelberg man is 

now regarded as a river-border-living progen- 
itor of the first caveman, Homo neanderthal- 
ensis, who spread all over western Europe, 
the Channel Islands, and Britain during the 
period of the last great glaciation, estimated 
at from 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. 

It is a tragic circumstance that the skull- 
top of the Neanderthal man was in the hands 


150 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


of both Huxley and Darwin without either 
of them recognizing it as the “missing 
link”? between a lower and a higher race of 
man, for such it is now known to be from 
numerous remains of the jaws, of the skull, 
of the limbs found in different parts of France, 
Belgium, Germany and Spain, especially from 
three superbly preserved skulls and skeletons 
described by the distinguished French palzeon- 
tologist, Marcellin Boule. Several stages in 
the evolution of this race are also known, be- 
ginning with the Heidelberg, continuing with 
the Krapina fossils of Croatia, and ending 
with the most specialized Neanderthals buried 
within or in front of the caverns of the Dor- 
dogne region of France. Of all the fossil races 
this is by far the most fully known, as to in- 
dustry, as to culture and ceremonial, as to 
anatomy. In fact there is little more to be 
learned about the Neanderthals except their 
place of origin, which is probably in central 
Asia, as Indicated by recent discoveries of dis- 
tinctly neanderthaloid flints in the Ordos re- 
gion of northern China. 


IN EDUCATION 151 


PROBABLE ASIATIC CENTRE OF HUMAN 
ORIGIN AND DISPERSAL 

This leads us to digress for a moment on 
the probable centre of origin and dispersal of 
the human race. For one, I am a monophyle- 
tist—that is, I believe that all branches of the 
family Hominide came from a single great 
stock, characterized by erect posture, by the 
opposable thumb, by the walking and running 
mode of progress rather than by the arboreal 
mode, a stock in which alertness and intelli- 
gence were at.a premium in the open or partly 
forested country. 

A few years ago, when discoveries in west- 
ern Europe crowded fast upon each other, 
when the Piltdown man and shortly after the 
Foxhall man were found in Great Britain, the 
_ pendulum of anthropologic opinion swung 
toward Europe as the possible dispersal centre 
of the human race. I never favored this the- 
ory, because we have every reason to believe 
that western Europe was a lowland, either 
partly or heavily forested. Then Matthew 
and myself independently advocated the high 
central Asia origin of the human stock—a 


152 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


plateau partly forest region capable of stimu- 
lating all the intelligence of primitive mankind. 
The very latest discovery by the Central 
Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum 
of Natural History is extensive flint culture 
in the very heart of the Gobi Desert. This 
culture belongs to the close of the Stone Age, 
corresponding with the Azilian of France and, 
taken together with the neanderthaloid cul- 
ture of the Ordos in northern China, tends 
strongly to reaffirm the older theory that Asia 
is the chief home of the human race. 

Every great anthropologic and palzeontologic 
discovery fits into its proper place, enabling 
us gradually to fill out one after another the 
great branching lines of human ascent and to 
connect with these branches definite phases 
of industry and of art. This gives us a double 
means of interpretation, archzeological and 
anatomical. While many branches and links 
in the chain remain to be discovered, we are 
now in a position to predict with great con- 
fidence not only what these various branches 
will be like but where they are most likely to 
be found. 


Vill 


HOW TO TEACH EVOLUTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 


The Bryan fundamentalist movement did not concern the 
scientific and educational standards of America in the least 
so long as the movement kept within its own bounds. But 
we educators were suddenly awakened to the fact that from 
small and unthreatening beginnings the movement had in- 
creased in broadness and aggressiveness until it aimed at our 
very Constitution of learning in the United States, which 
guarantees to education entire freedom from religious or 
sectarian control. Among our deepest instincts, scientific 
and political, are non-interference by educators with any of 
the doctrines or dogmas, however extreme or even absurd, 
of the three hundred and fifty or more bodies of believers into 
which our religious communities are divided, and, on the other 
hand, non-interference by these religious bodies with the 
teaching in our schools of well-established truths. 


HOW TO TEACH EVOLUTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 


Need of well-trained teachers — The author’s fiftieth anni- 
versary as a teacher — Meaning of the word “evolution”? — 
Distinction between opinion and fact — The natural grada- 
tion in teaching evolution — The inspiration of the object — 
The modern opportunities of Nature-study — The beginnings 
of evolutionary teaching. 


VOLUTION, while a_ well-established 
truth of Nature, as a teaching subject 

is like an explosive weapon, likely te go off 
and do a great deal of harm. For this reason 
it should be presented only by well-trained 
teachers who thoroughly understand the sub- 
ject, who clearly distinguish between fact and 
opinion, and who realize that the strong meat 
of science is not for babes but for adults. To 
secure such well-equipped teachers, to put the 
teaching profession back where it was fifty 
years ago as the leading profession in the wel- 
fare and progress of the country, the most 
important thing in American life today is to 


double the allowance for education in almost 
155 


156 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


every State in the Union, especially in the 
eastern States, where the cost of living is high- 
est. By recent report, New York City gives 
16 per cent of its total income to education, 
whereas the city of Los Angeles gives 60 per 
cent of its total income. Under present salary 
conditions it is absolutely impossible to re- 
cruit the ablest and best teachers for the 
cause of education in its broadest sense, spir- 
itual, intellectual, moral, and physical. On 
the whole, the present teaching class is con- 
scientious, high-minded, and unselfish, but, in 
general, is unprepared either by observation 
or experience In many of the subjects it un- 
dertakes to teach. 

This ignorance, especially in the subjects of 
the newer scientific fields of biology and geol- 
ogy, was startlingly displayed, to the amaze- 
ment of the whole world, in the now famous 
Scopes case. This case suddenly revealed 
throughout large sections of the United States 
absolutely dense, almost medizeval ignorance 
of the simplest and most beneficent teachings 
of Nature and showed a fanatical determina- 
tion to suppress these teachings in the schools, 


IN EDUCATION 157 


under the wholly misguided conviction that 
they are necessarily hostile to religion and 
morals. Such a state of mind, recurring again 
and again in the history of civilization, has 
profoundly affected education from top to bot- 
tom, from the highest rulers to the lowest sub- 
jects, but we did not suspect it would ever 
occur with us in the present civilization of the 
United States. In the Tennessee case, the 
governor, the legislators, the courts, and the 
majority of the people, including certain of 
the teaching class, while animated by the 
highest motives, were pursuing a course quite 
fatal both to religion and morals. No code of 
morals, however Draconian, can stand up 
against the laws of Nature. Bryan and the 
fundamentalists remind us of King Canute 
and his courtiers enthroned by the seashore, 
commanding the waves of Truth to recede. 


FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY AS A TEACHER 


In a few months I am celebrating the semi- 
centennial of my career as a teacher, and I 
may give a few words of personal experience 
bearing on the direct inspiration of Nature. 


158 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


In 1876, under an impulse wholly from with- 
in, I began to observe the lessons of geology. 
Three friends joined me in a country-wide 
tour with an old horse and old wagon that 
had been used as a chicken roost. We jour- 
neyed through the highlands of the Hudson 
and through the Catskill Mountains to the 
limestone caves on the westerly slope, geolo- 
gizing in the most rudimentary manner as we 
went along. We observed and collected the 
Palzeozoic fossils along the roadways, and then 
tried to identify them from Dana’s ‘Manual 
of Geology.” This expedition of 1876 so fasci- 
nated us that in 1877 we planned one into the 
Rocky Mountains, and thereby gained the 
training for explorations which have extended 
entirely around the world, ending in Mon- 
golia, the roof of the world, the centre of the 
life of mammals, and perhaps the homeland 
of man himself. 

The footprints of evolution observed in the 
Catskills and Rockies led me to search for 
footprints in practically every State of the 
Union, in England, France, and Germany, in 
northern Africa, and, finally, in China and 


IN EDUCATION 159 


Mongolia. Thus through direct observation 
in every continent was the principle of evolu- 
tion impressed on my mind as the universal 
and only method of creation, mysterious, pur- 
posive, beautiful, as are all the laws of Nature. 

In recalling fifty years’ enrolment in the 
great University of Nature, and where it has 
led me, I am often reminded of the closing 
lines of Goethe’s ‘‘ Wilhelm Meister’s Wan- 
derjahre”’: 


Bleibe nicht am Boden heften 
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus! 
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kriaften 
Ueberall bin ich zu Haus; 

Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen, 

Sind wir jede Sorge los; 

Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen 
Darum ist die Welt so gross. 


As one sequel to this first Nature course 
entered upon by Scott and myself, Princeton 
juniors, it may interest you to know that both 
of us have been awarded the Wollaston Med- 
al, the highest honor in the gift of the Geo- 
logical Society of London. Scott is now the 
distinguished Blair Professor of Geology and 


160 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Paleontology in Princeton University, retired 
president of the American Philosophical So- 
ciety, and recipient of the Hayden Medal of 
the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sci- 
ences; with my own career you are probably 
familiar. 


MEANING OF THE WORD EVOLUTION 


It is singular that the word evolution,} 
which is our feeble human symbol for the di- 
vine order of Nature, should be so misunder- 
stood and misinterpreted in State after State 
of our Union, and that effort after effort has 
been made to make it an outcast and pariah 
in education. Yet it is a fact that in many 
parts of the United States the attempt is 
being made to suppress the teaching of evo- 
lution in our public schools, on the ground 
that it is harmful to the conduct, morals, and 
religion of our youth. 


1 Evolution (Latin evolutio, an unrolling or opening [of a book],< 
evolutus, p.p. of evolvere, unroll, unfold >). The act or process of un- 
folding, or the state of being unfolded; an opening out or unrolling. 

“Evolution or development is, in fact, at present employed in 
biology as a general name for the history of the steps by which any 
living being has acquired the morphological and physiological char- 
acters which distinguish it.” (“Evolution in Biology,” Huxley.) 


IN EDUCATION 161 


DISTINCTION BETWEEN OPINION AND FACT 


I regret to say that some teachers do not 
distinguish between opinion and truth; they 
even pass backward and forward from truth 
to opinion, and from opinion to truth with- 
out being conscious of their own vacillation. 
One rule I have invariably made with my 
classes is to stamp the word opinion on every 
hypothesis or theory, and the word fact on 
every established principle or law. 

My connection with the Scopes case bears 
out my conviction that sincerity and truth- 
fulness are the very heart-blood of education. 
No teacher should be forced to dissemble or 
to be insincere in expressing his real beliefs 
of scientific truths; he may rightly be forced 
to express his beliefs in a tactful manner, so 
that without dissembling he may not repudi- 
ate them. To my mind insincerity, lack of 
truthfulness and dissembling of real beliefs 
are vital defects in a teacher which may ulti- 
mately destroy his entire usefulness, the rift 
in the lute which, ever widening, finally makes 
the music mute. Scholastic and academic 


162 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


freedom in the expression of natural truth is as 
imperative as is scholastic and academic cau- 
tion in the expression of personal opinion. 


THE NATURAL GRADATION IN TEACHING 
EVOLUTION 


According to the above principle, the teach- 
ing of evolution should advance gradually, 
step by step, with the development of the 
mind, of the character, and of the maturity 
of the student. For example, only mature 
students are capable of understanding the 
very perplexing differences between different 
theories of evolution, such as those of La- 
marck, of Darwin and Wallace, of Herbert 
Spencer and Cope, of Weismann, DeVries, and 
Mendel. Moreover, the very words “ Darwin- 
ism,” “‘Lamarckism,”’ and “‘Mendelism”’ are 
incrusted with human opinions, discussions, 
controversies, and philosophical and theologi- 
cal disputes which have no place in the school 
curriculum, and are difficult to master even 
in the advanced years of college and univer- 
sity life. 

Consequently, Darwin should be mentioned 


IN EDUCATION 163 


purely as a naturalist from his earliest years, 
as a voyager on the Beagle, as a close observer 
of rocks, flowers, plants, and animals, and, 
finally, as an exponent of the principle of evo- 
lution and originator of the great idea that 
the struggle for existence and the survival of 
the fittest have played a large part in making 
plants and animals and man himself what 
they are. The story of the youthful Darwin 
with the beetle in his mouth may be as potent 
for natural history as the story of Washington 
and the cherry-tree has been for statesman- 
ship; or we may tell the story of the Abbot of 
Briinn, Gregor Mendel (1822-84), who in his 
cloister garden made his great discovery about 
heredity in his observations of the edible pea 
(Pisum sativum). 

For younger minds we should strip science 
of the elements of human error clothing it, and 
present Nature face to face, in its simple 
forms and its simple truthfulness. We need 
not teach evolution involved in human falli- 
bility, as Haeckel taught it in his now out- 
worn “Anthropogenie,”’ but as Darwin taught 


it in his “ Voyage of the Beagle”’ and as Lyell 


164 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


taught it in his “Elements of Geology.” Thus, 
while at first avoiding, if needs be, the use 
of the word “evolution” and stepping aside 
from any theory of evolution (since both word 
and theory are of human origin), we may 
present to the most tender minds the real 
essentials of the evolution process, namely, 
of the adaptations to be found in every plant 
and animal we study, and which may be ex- 
plained without involving even a shade of our 
scientific philosophy. Thus the real signif- 
icance of the law of evolution is gradually 
made clear before the largely misunderstood 
word itself is used, and long before the student ° 
approaches philosophy or metaphysics. 

The moral lessons which may be instilled 
in this manner are countless, for the word 
“evolution” is merely a human expression for 
ascent rather than descent, for progress rather 
than retrogression, for effort and endeavor 
rather than for indolence and idleness, for the 
overcoming of difficulties and obstacles, for 
the greater ultimate reward in the mastery of 
self, for adaptation to the changes and chances 
of this mortal life. 


IN EDUCATION 165 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OBJECT 


Gradus ad Parnassum, the watchword of evo- 
lution, is also the watchword of the teacher’s 
life. The task of the teacher of the principles 
of evolution is far from an easy one. The 
teacher may appeal to the inspiration of the 
object, of which I could give you many illus- 
trations. My biology started with the original 
study of a hen’s egg; Beebe was set in motion 
by the bird; McClure started with the brain 
of a sheep. There is no telling what latent 
powers the observation of a single natural 
object may evoke. 

I discovered for myself that the easiest 
lines of instruction are those which a univer- 
sity specialist and investigator may give to 
the most advanced students in university 
courses, where larger knowledge may be taken 
for granted, where professional training is in 
view, and where the teacher does not have to 
stop to explain details. 

Then there is the college grade of student, 
with whom inspiration is the larger part of 
the teacher’s battle; the teacher cannot inspire 


166 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


if he has not a burning enthusiasm of his own 
on the subject to impart—he loses the battle 
at the outset, for the college student is a ca- 
pricious animal subject to a hundred different 
tastes and impulses, and his interest and at- 
tention must be won over. 

The teacher has to make his own subject 
more interesting and inspiring than athletics 
or dramatics or any of the so-called extra- 
curricular activities of college life. I know 
this can be done, for I did it myself in my ten 
years’ professorate at Princeton, in which I 
never took an absence roll because it was 
never necessary. From my Princeton and Co- 
lumbia laboratories and lecture-rooms be- 
tween 1880 and 1908 went forth sixty-eight 
explorers, investigators, professors, and au- 
thors, including many men now of interna- 
tional reputation. Teacher after teacher has 
conquered, so let only the dullard teacher com- - 
plain that this battle of the inspiration of the 
subject cannot be won. The same ordeal of 
the inspiration of the subject and of magnetic 
personality awaits the teacher in the high 
school and in the secondary school, where, al- 


IN EDUCATION 167 


though supported by the compulsory drill ele- 
ment of school life, he must make his subject 
more interesting than any other. 

It is on this point of inspiration that the 
teacher of evolution as biology has a natural 
advantage over all his colleagues, for what 
branch of science is so interesting and fascinat- 
ing as life itself? I have this opinion from two 
of the most eminent physicists in the country, 
Michael I. Pupin, of Columbia, and George < 
Ellery Hale, of Mount Wilson Observatory. / 
What secrets compare with the secrets of the ~ 
flowers, of the plants, of the animals, of hu- 5! 
man life and progress ?—for in its real signif-. 
icance this is what evolution means: it is prog-» 
ress, it is advance, it is continuous uplift and 
improvement, it is a constantly creative adap! 
tation to new and often trying conditions of / 
life. Were it not for human evolution—that 
is, for human progress—the beautiful build- 
ings in which we assemble would not exist; we”. 
would still be meeting in a smoky cavern or 


exposed to the fierce winds of a drifting river (. 
valley, as were our ancestors of long ago. “ 


Were it not for human evolution and the prog- 


168 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


ress of our minds and souls there would be no 
association of teachers of colleges and second- 
ary schools, there would be no Columbia, 
Harvard, or any other university, there would 
be no city of New York, there would be no 
free United States of America, there would be 
no civilization anywhere, because only through 
this all-beneficent principle of evolution are 
we here, with all our human limitations and 
defects, ever battling for the future, that our 
America at least shall never stem the upward 
and onward march of humanity. 


THE MODERN OPPORTUNITIES OF NATURE- 
STUDY 


Such a programme for the teaching of 
evolution involves two absolutely essential 
elements: first, a natural gift for teaching; 
second, personal training through direct ob- 
servation of the process of evolution. To my 
knowledge, there is not a single existing text- 
or reference-book in the English language 
which clearly presents the whole process of 
evolution, although there are many extremely 
valuable books in which the five chief prin- 


IN EDUCATION 169 


ciples of adaptation, of development and re- 
generation, of sacrifice and compensation, of 
the struggle for existence and survival of the 
fittest are clearly set forth. 

Fortunately, the modern teacher has oppor- 
tunities unknown a generation ago, namely, 
in the admirable guides to Nature-study in all 
its branches, in the wonderful seashore and 
Jand laboratories, in the great museums of 
natural history springing up in most of our 
cities, and in the new “nature trails” like that 
recently established by Doctor Frank H. Lutz 
in our New York State Park. Nothing can 
take the place of preparation for the teaching 
of evolution through direct personal observa- 
tion and reflection and, perhaps, discovery by 
the teacher himself or herself. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF EVOLUTIONARY 
TEACHING 


The quiet, unseen, and continuous ascent 
and adaptation of life to new conditions is the 
nobler and more spiritual side of evolution, 
and it is the very first principle that should 
be taught. It should at first be taught only 


170 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


from Nature itself, under the apprenticeship 
of the sympathetic and skilful teacher; it 
should not at once be taught from Darwin or 
Wallace, from Haeckel or Herbert Spencer, or 
even from the more modern Mendel and Weis- 
mann. Following direct observations of Nature 
under the teacher’s guidance there should be 
brief and simple lessons and verifications from 
books. 

The young student need not concern him- 
self about age-long controversies between sci- 
ence and theology, because these man-made 
disputations lie entirely outside the chief field 
of evolutionary teaching in the schools, and 
belong only in the advanced college and uni- 
versity grade. 

Consistent with my own observations on 
the child mind and the child nature is my 
attitude on the question immediately before 
us, namely, how to teach evolution in the 
schools. The very first maxim is that evolu- 
tion should be taught in such a way as to exalt 
and beautify the entire conception of life rather 
than to debase or materialize it; it should be 
taught in such a way as to satisfy imstinctive 


IN EDUCATION 171 


curiosity about the workings of Nature, to 
answer the simple and innocent inquiries that 
arise in the young mind—in brief, to inspire 
youth with the truth and beauty of Nature, 
not to debase youth with the alloy of the me- 
chanical, commercial, or sensual side of life or 
to falsify evolution as a gospel of negation 
rather than to dignify it as a gospel of inspira- 
tion. 

Among the fundamental principles of evo- 
lution which completely baffle our understand- 
ing are illustrations and examples which are 
easily brought within reach of the child mind 
and of the school mind of all grades. I refer 
first to adaptation—the fitness of means to 
ends—as observed in plants and animals; 
adaptation is at once the simplest and most 
obvious gateway of evolutionary knowledge 
and experience. The second step is to show 
that adaptation or fitness is invariably 
brought about by sacrifice, through the loss 
of less important structures and organs, to 
offset the gain of the more important, as 
illustrated in plants and animals, or, where 
these are not accessible, in the human body, 


172 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


limbs, hands, and feet. For example, the 
hand of the teacher, with simple models and 
diagrams of the foot of the ancestral four- 
toed horse and of the modern single-toed 
horse, may make perfectly clear the first 
three processes of adaptation, of sacrifice and 
compensation, and of correlative use, de- 
velopment, and progress, or of correlative dis- 
use, degeneration, and retrogression. Add to 
these simple and easily explained processes 
the idea of the struggle for existence and sur- 
vival of the fittest and you have the whole 
framework of evolution as it was known to 
Aristotle and Darwin, the greatest biological 
minds of all time. 

This kind of evolution teaching is inspiring 
and uplifting; it embodies the creed of evolu- 
tion which I first set forth to Bryan in my 
“Evolution and Religion”’: 

The moral principle inherent in evolution is that 
nothing can be gained in this world without an 
effort; the ethical principle inherent in evolution 
is that only the best has the right to survive; the 
spiritual principle in evolution is the dominance 


of beauty, of order, and of design in the daily 
myriad of miracles to which we owe our existence. 


IN EDUCATION 173 


Not for a moment would I substitute such 
a creed for the Ten Commandments, for the 
Lord’s Prayer or for the Sermon on the Mount, 
but when puzzling philosophic questions diffi- 
cult for the teacher to answer begin to be 
asked in the high school or college stage of in- 
struction, it may be pointed out step by step, 
as in the chapter “Evolution and Daily Liv- 
ing,’ that Nature never relaxes but always 
reinforces moral and spiritual laws, that Na- 
ture may forgive but never forgets—in other 
words, that there can be no contradiction or 
conflict between Nature and religion, because 
primitive religion issues out of the heart of ,”», 
Nature in reverence for the powers of the un- 
seen. 





IX 


HOW TO RESTORE RELIGION TO 
THE SCHOOLS 


Will Religion or Science control the future of mankind? 
This was the question discussed before the members of the 
National Republican Club on January 23, 1926. Among the 
well-known speakers were Mr. Fred B. Smith of the Interna- 
tional Y. M. C. A., Reverend Minot Simons, Unitarian min- 
‘ister, Doctor P. W. Kuo, Chinese educator, Reverend S. 
Parkes Cadman, President of the Federal Council of Churches, 
and Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, scientist. Perhaps a 
debate was anticipated in the choice of speakers, but the 
discussion proved to be entirely harmonious. The views of 
Doctor Cadman largely coincided with those expressed in 
the present article. 


The question of the restoration of the teaching of religion 
in the schools was much more violently debated a few days 
later before the Board of Education of the City of New York. 
The proposal to introduce the Ten Commandments and sim- 
ple religious doctrines such as those advocated in this chapter 
led to a very heated discussion between representatives of 
the Protestant, Hebrew, and Roman Catholic communions. 
This meeting apparently proved that the hope of agreement 
on any form of religious teaching in the much-divided re- 
ligious community of New York is entirely visionary. 


HOW TO RESTORE RELIGION TO 
THE SCHOOLS 


A simplified religion and a reverent science — Religion or 
Science alone fails — The scientific experiment in Russia — 
The teaching of the universal elements of religion — The re- 
spective gifts of the Hebrews and of the Christians — The 
historic elements of religion — Governors of morals in the 
daily press — Power of the headliner. 


N my opinion religion and science will unite 

to control the future of mankind. This 
will be a simplified religion and a reverent 
science. 


RELIGION OR SCIENCE ALONE FAILS 


Religion alone has signally failed to control 
mankind in the past, either because it has ig- 
nored the teachings of Nature, from which in 
itself religion is primarily derived, or because 
it has allied itself with temporal or political 
power, which the founders of every great sys- 
tem of religion, except the Mohammedan, ex- 
pressly repudiate. Religion alone failed to 


avert plague, pestilence, and famine, which 
177 


178 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


paralyzed the armies of the wisest statesmen 
from the time of Moses to that of the discov- 
ery of vaccine by Jenner. Religion alone laid 
down great social and humanitarian precepts 
which, all-wise and all-provident in their day 
of small populations and of vast territories 
and unknown seas to conquer, are neither wise 
nor beneficent in our day of an earth teem- 
ing to the saturation-point with people. “Be 
fruitful and multiply,” was a beautiful reli- 
gious sentiment in the day of Moses, but to- 
day science compels us to restate it in terms 
like these: “‘Be fruitful and multiply if your 
offspring will be a blessing rather than a curse 
to themselves and to the society into which 
they are born.” So with many another pre- 
cept, wise in pastoral days, unwise in our 
crowded age. 

Science alone could control the future of 
mankind unaided, if men and women and 
children were mere machines. We could more 
than justify Osler’s great expression, “ Man’s 
redemption of man,” if men were merely a 
compound of matter and energy, of actions 
and reactions between molecules, atoms, and 


IN EDUCATION 179 


electrons. Largely inspired by men of deep 
religious motive, like Jenner and Pasteur, sci- 
ence has indeed redeemed the body of man, 
and has shown the way to its final and abso- 
lute physical redemption through the conquest 
of all plagues, pestilences, and famines; the 
most solemn words of the Litany may be re- 
written as follows: “From ignorance of the 
causes of plague, pestilence, and famine, good 
Lord, deliver us.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT IN RUSSIA 


In one of the great states of the world, Rus- 
sia, the experiment is being made on a colossal 
scale to rule mankind by science alone, on a 
platform of atheism, of denial of all religious 
restraints and prohibitions, and of affirmation 
of atheism. This experiment, too, might be 
successful if the at once spirited and docile 
Russian people were mere machines, but un- 
prejudiced scientific research and unprejudiced 
religious, as distinguished from theological, re- 
search reveals that these peasants are much 
more than machines; their bodies are easy to 
account for by evolution, their spirits and souls 


180 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


can be accounted for only through very long, — 
continuous upward progress, closely akin to 
creation. | 

The existence of this human spirit, which 
religious-minded people call the soul, is an un- 
deniable fact alike in science and in religion, 
entirely apart from the theologic question of 
the origin of the soul and of its immortality. 
It is a fact which every State has to reckon 
with, whether it be Russia or the United 
States of America, that human government Is 
not a government of machines, but of minds 
and spirits. 

Consequently, as a devotee of science I reach 
the point that religion must also control the 
future of mankind, a religion purified and sim- 
plified by our knowledge of Nature. For this 
reason it is the first concern of statesmen to 
recognize that in the future these forces must 
go hand in hand, that education in true re- 
ligion is no less vital than education in the 
laws of Nature. It is very significant that the 
very opening sentence of Lincoln’s first public 
speech was that education is the first and most 
important duty of the State. 


IN EDUCATION 181 


THE TEACHING OF THE UNIVERSAL 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGION 


So I am a strong advocate of restoring the 
teaching of religion to our public schools, re- 


ligion of the kind which has been abolished / 


because of purely theologic differences, not be-”. ~ 


cause of its inherent lack of force in education. 
As a man of science I am not tongue-tied by 
adherence to any denomination, creed, or dog- : 
ma; I am free to speak from the scientific 
standpoint whatever may be my personal opin- 
ions and principles. I should like to see all the 
religious men of this great city of 6,000,000 
souls, of this great country of a 100,000,000 
souls, get together and agree upon a simple, 
elemental, and more or less primeval teaching 
of religion, in which all men, except those who 
persuade themselves that they are atheists, 


agree. 
GIFTS OF THE HEBREWS AND CHRISTIANS 


The Hebrews have a rich gift to offer in the 
Ten Commandments, which no man can re- 
fuse. Why not brand upon the minds and 


182 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


hearts of our boys and girls such elemental 
imperatives as “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou 
shalt not steal,” “‘ Thou shalt not commit adul- 
tery,” “Thou shall not bear false witness” — 
imperatives of all human experience. Let the 
Old Testament contribute great adages on the 
training of youth, on youthful friendship, on 
family devotion, on loyalty to the State, on 
purity of living—adages which are built into 
the very foundations of the Republic. Let the 
Christians contribute the Lord’s Prayer, in 
which in a few words all religion is summed 
up, the Sermon on the Mount, adapted to the 
pastoral or village life of man, or passages 
from the teachings of St. Paul and other mis- 


“.) slonaries, perfectly adapted to the virtues and 


vices, the strivings and failures, of a municipal 
life like ours. 


HISTORIC ELEMENTS OF RELIGION 


These historic elements of religion, carved 
out of thousands of years of hard human ex- 
perience, are easily impressed on the hearts 
and minds of the young; they teach the young 
soul to recoil with abhorrence from the deeds 


IN EDUCATION 183 


which are lightly headlined in our daily press, 
lightly treated on the stage and in the movies, 
as if they were of the very smallest, instead 
of the very greatest, concern to the future of 
mankind. 


GOVERNORS OF MORALS IN THE DAILY 
PRESS 


Time was when chiefs, princes, and kings 
governed great states by their laws and edicts 
as both nominal and real governors; these 
were the days of aristocracy. Democracy has 
changed all this, and it would be hard to 
discover who are the real governors in this 
human maelstrom of ours. Wise and great 
and religious as may be our elective presi- 
dents, our State governors, our mayors, their 
powers are certainly more nominal than real, 
for democracy has thrown real government into 
the hands of the newspaper press and of the 
managers of the theatres and movie houses. 
What avails the temperance or the piety of a 
Coolidge, a Smith, a Walker, if prohibition is 
laughed off the stage, if the stage clergymen 
appear as shambling hypocrites, if boys and 


184 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


girls are fed on the irreverence of the funny 
page, if Chaplin in two of his most successful 
pieces shows the happy ending of the life of 
a cunning thief, if the virtuous woman is 
made unattractive and the scarlet woman the 
heroine, 1f one newspaper column makes a 
prize-fighter the lion of the day and the next 
column euphemistically describes a murderer 
as a bandit. 


POWER OF THE HEADLINER 


After several years of scientific exploration 
and research in trying to discover our real 
governor of morals, I am for the time con- 
fident that he is the “headliner” of the daily 
press, the only man in the community that 
we are all afraid of! I recently delivered at 
New Haven a perfectly innocent address on 
the Origin of Species; mn it there was not 
»a word about religion, but when it bore the 
headliner’s imprint it appeared in all parts of 
the United States as “Osborn Raps Tradi- 
_ tional Theology,” or “Osborn Declares Sci- 
“ence and Religion Irreconcilable.”” With such 
transcendent power to transform a single 


IN EDUCATION 185 


speech, may we not quote from Senator. In- 
galls’s classic sonnet in characterization of the 
“headliner”’: 


Master of human destinies am I! 
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. 


. . . It is the hour of fate, 
And they who follow me reach every state 
Mortals desire. . . . 


These swaying moral currents of the streets, 
of the daily press, of the stage, of the movies, 
are the real, actual, educational forces con- 
trolling the present youth and, consequently, 
the future of mankind. In the words of Cal- 
vin Coolidge, they must be offset by a rever- 
ence for Nature, a reverence for law and for 
the spiritual forces of true religion. To face .- 
the future of mankind, therefore, a simplified — 
religion must join hands with a reverent sci- 
ence. 





X 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF THE 
GEOLOGIC ANTIQUITY OF MAN 


This address, delivered to the students of Cornell Univer- 
sity on February 19, 1926, is in reply to “‘Mr. Bryan Speaks 
to Darwin,” published in the Forum, July, 1925, the last ar- 
ticle of my opponent, in which he sweeps aside all the exist- 
ing evidence for the evolution of man and with good-natured 
raillery shows upon what apparently slender threads certain 
of this evidence depends. The Nebraska tooth, Hespero- 
pithecus, supposedly belonging to the first anthropoid ape to 
reach America, becomes a special target, and indeed consti- 
tutes the kind of evidence which is disputed even among sci- 
entific men. 


*Fancies of the Evolutionists” was the title of an article 
in the February, 1926, Forum, in which Doctor John Roach 
Straton issued a further challenge to the reliability of the 
evidence contained in the American Museum of Natural 
History exhibition hall known as the “Age of Man.” Ac- 
cordingly, in this chapter there is again set forth convincing 
evidence of the geologic antiquity and creative evolution of 
man and the newer evidence that man belongs to a family of 
his own, entirely independent of the ape family. Of special 
significance are the great contributions of scholars and divines 
of the Roman Catholic Church to our knowledge of the pre- 
history of man. 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF THE 
GEOLOGIC ANTIQUITY OF MAN 


Man on the earth 500,000 years — 130 years of research — 
Significant bits of fossil evidence — Reluctant acceptance of 
new facts— No conspiracy of science — Man a family in- 
dependent of the apes — Scholarship of the French clergy — 
Dispersal and branching of the human family — We cannot 
excommunicate our ancestors. 


HE purpose of this article is not to reply 

to the recent attacks upon my scientific 
character and integrity, but to set forth clearly 
the rapidly accumulating evidence of the ge- 
ologic antiquity and creative evolution of 
man. The outstanding irrefutable facts are 
the following: First, that man with a human 
form and human attributes has been on the 
earth over 500,000 years, according to the 


least estimates of geologic time. Second, that ~~ 


man belongs to a family of his own, called the - 
Hominide, which has a history entirely inde- 
pendent of all other families for an incalculable 
period of time—two and a half millions of 


years at the least geologic estimate. Third, 
189 


1909 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


that this human and prehuman family, com- 
posed of the existing and prehistoric races of 
man, has from the first divided into many 
branches more or less rapidly progressive and 
intelligent. Fourth, that we have indisputa- 
ble records of the early dispersal of these 
branches in central, southern, and eastern 
Asia, in all except the northern parts of Eu- 
rope, in the British Isles. Fifth, that our 
present knowledge both of the anatomical 
characters and of the cultural unity of even 
the earliest known branches of the human 
race points to descent from a single geologi- 
cally remote human stock, the blood and her- 
itage from which constitute a prehistoric 
brotherhood of man. Sixth, that convincing 
evidence of these outstanding facts of early 
human history rests, first, on the indestruc- 
tible flint and stone industry interpreted; 
second, upon absolutely consistent anatomical 
evidence clearly interpreted by four genera- 
tions of expert and conscientious observers 
drawn from the ranks of laymen, of learned 
professions, and of the clergy, especially of 
the Roman Catholic Church. 


IN EDUCATION 191 


ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF 
RESEARCH 


From this it follows that our present knowl- 
edge of the prehistory of man rests upon 130 
years of extremely difficult and often baffling 
research. The Hall of the Age of Man in the 
American Museum of Natural History pre- 
sents an epitome of this long voyage into the 
unknown, and an assemblage of all the posi- 
tive facts established by discoveries in all 
parts of the world, which give us flashes of the 
truth. The very arrangement of this exhibi- 
tion has cost ten years of continuous effort; 
repeated journeys to Europe to verify the 
documents of human prehistory at first hand; 
strong persuasion to secure casts and other 
replicas of original materials so unique and 
precious that they are hoarded im safes like 
the holy relics of certain of the saints; inter- 
national and scientific pressure to examine 
certain materials jealously guarded even from 
scientific view by their owners; profound and 
painstaking independent researches on the 
foot, on the jaw, on the skull, on the teeth, 


192 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


of such character that a single fragment may 
tell a story as conclusive as the cuneiform in- 
scriptions on a Babylonian cylinder. 


SIGNIFICANT BITS OF FOSSIL EVIDENCE 


To the well-intentioned but unenlightened 
mind this century and a half of world-wide 
search for the fossil remains of man and of his 
animal contemporaries, as well as the days 
and nights of self-denying labor directed to 
the decipherment of these baffling cuneiform 
inscriptions of human history, these Rosetta 
Stones of antiquity, mean absolutely nothing. 
To such a mind a half cranium like that dis- 
covered in the gravels of Piltdown or in the 
river sands of Trinil, Java, is merely a bit of 
shattered bone to be thrown aside as worth- 
less or irrelevant. But to the human and com- 
parative neurologist who is devoting an entire 
lifetime to the study of the human brain, this 
fragment of bone reveals, through a cast of its 
inner surface, the entire anatomy of the brain, 
its approximate capacity, the configuration of 
its convolutions, the courses of the arteries and 
veins which traverse its surface, the propor- 


IN EDUCATION 193 


tions of its various parts, the relative develop- 
ment of those areas which control the move- 
ments of the hands and limbs, of other areas 
in which lie the higher centres of idealism and 


of imagination, and of still other centres which | 


in the human brain control the faculty of - 
speech. Thus the brain casts of the Trinil, of 
the Piltdown, of the Neanderthal man, when 
examined by methods slowly developed by 
man through centuries of research, extending 
back to the times of Galen and of A‘sculapius, 
are by no means blurred or indecipherable 
documents like the palimpsests of many sacred 
writings, but are absolutely unchallengeable 
records as clear as daylight to the man who has 
learned how to read them, although absolutely 
baffling and confusing to the unenlightened. 


NO CONSPIRACY OF SCIENCE; RELUCTANT 
ACCEPTANCE OF NEW FACTS 


Nor has there been any conspiracy either of . 
silence or of scientific prejudice, in the original 
significance of the word prejudicium, in form- 
ing advance or biassed judgments or of inclin- 
ing to observe certain facts which further a 


194 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


preconceived theory and to ignore other facts. 
On the contrary, every one of these fossil doc- 
uments of human history has passed through 
a double baptism: First, the wide-spread hu- 
man inertia and reluctance to incorporate a 
new idea, a reluctance shared both by the 
laity and the clergy; second, wide-spread re- 
luctance on the part of a majority of scientific 
men to accept discoveries made by other scien- 
tific men—witness the tardy acceptance of the 
first discovery of Neanderthal man, its rejec- 
tion even by Darwin and by the master anato- 
mist Huxley, its long battle for scientific recog- 
nition which came finally in the discovery of 
remains of an exactly similar human skull-top 
at Spy, Belgium. Even after Spy there were 
scientific doubting Thomases who declared 
that complete skeletons must be secured. Fi- 
nally a complete skeleton was found—the most 
perfectly preserved Neanderthaloid known— 
at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, by the Abbés A. 
and J. Bouysonnie and L. Bardon, and other 
skeletons were found at various sites. 

But still there remain the doubting Thom- 
ases who will not allow us to reconstruct 


IN EDUCATION 195 


Neanderthal man, although we know every 
bit of his bony anatomy, and every corner of 
the surface of his brain. Exactly so with the 
Piltdown man discovered and worked out 
through a decade of unparalleled labor by Sir 
Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Mu- 
seum; in all the annals of human scientific 
endeavor there is no parallel to the persis- 
tence, patience, and conscientiousness of this 
palzeontologist who, day after day, week after 
week, month after month, year after year, 
minutely examined these most baffling Pilt- 
down gravels in search of additional fragments 
of the Piltdown head in order to verify his 
original statement that the chimpanzee-like 
jaw belonged with the thoroughly human 
cranium. Nor was he encouraged by a chorus 
of praise from his fellow anatomists; on the 
other hand, he met every possible discourage- 
ment on the part of the scientific men. My 
own scepticism in the matter very nearly cost 
me my lifelong friendship with him, because 
he felt very much hurt by it. Now when he 
visits the excavation in the Piltdown gravels 
where he worked for ten years he points with 


196 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION ~ 


satisfaction to the very spot where Osborn _ 
stood when he recanted, and finally admitted’. ~ 
that the chimpanzee-like jaw belonged with S “2 


the human skull! 


MAN A FAMILY INDEPENDENT OF THE APES 


There has been even less conspiracy of sci- 
ence in favor of any given theory in the case 
of the Trinil race. A skull-cap and thigh-bone 
discovered in Java in 1891 received a name 
signifying “ape-like man” from Professor 
Eugen Dubois of the University of Amster- 
dam; this announcement was received with a 
storm of incredulity and few expressions of 
approval; the bony relics were locked up in 
the professor’s cabinet, and no one was al- 
lowed to see them; beautifully prepared plates 
were not published. Finally the writer took 
the matter up with the Dutch Academy of 
Science and with the Minister of the Nether- 
lands at Washington as a source of interna- 
tional regret that these human documents 
should not be opened to further research; and 
at last Doctor Dubois sent a cordial invitation 
to the American Museum of Natural History 


TO =. rl ht ee eee 


IN EDUCATION 197 


to participate in original research, promising 
a beautiful series of casts made under his 
direction and reserving for himself only the 
study of the femur, on the characters of which 
was based his deduction that the Trinil ape- 
man stood erect. Professor McGregor of 
Columbia University, one of the most con- 
scientious and painstaking anatomists in the 
world to-day, was sent out by the American 
Museum on this invitation; he rendered a re- 
port of convincing accuracy: First, that the 
Trinil race belongs in the family of man (Zomi- 
nide) and not in the family of apes (Szmide) ; 
second, and most significant, that the brain 
capacity is greater than Doctor Dubois at first 
supposed, namely, 940 cubic centimetres, and 
consequently is not only much larger and more 
indicative of intelligence than that of any 
anthropoid ape, but lies above the limit of the 
most primitive human types—930 cubic cen- 
timetres. Thus the Trinil race, after many 
hardships and vicissitudes, comes into its own; 
it is a veritable “‘missing link.” 

Connected with the Trinil man is one of the 
outstanding discoveries of the last decade, 


198 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


namely, that man has a long and noble ances- 
try of his own, extending back into the “‘corri- 
dors of time” so remotely that we need not 
in the least concern ourselves about the ana- 
tomical resemblance and similar blood reac- 
tions which connect us on the one hand with 
the higher anthropoid apes and on the other 
with the lower monkeys. This ancestral chain 
of human distinctness is hundreds of millenni- 
ums in length; the 500,000 years of the Age 
of Man which separate us from our human 
ancestors of the Foxhall race of Norfolk, Eng- 
land, are only a fragment of the whole period 
of time. It may be confidently asserted that 


for a period of at least 2,000,000 years man “ 


has constituted a separate family. 


”m 


SCHOLARSHIP OF THE FRENCH CLERGY 


But we must return for the moment to our 
chief subject—the authenticity of the docu- 
ments of human prehistory and the great 
scholars to whom they owe their decipher- 
ment. Among these scholars whose names 
adorn the honor-roll of anthropology in 
France, none is more illustrious than the long 


st as SS 


IN EDUCATION 199 


line of Catholic priests and abbés whose re- 
searches and scholarship have notably added 
to our knowledge of fossil man. This tribute 
is so important at the present time, when hu- 
man evolution is before us as an alleged but 
not real enemy of religion, that we deem it 
worthy of presentation in some historic detail. 

The Abbé Louis Bourgeois (1819-1878) rec- 
tor of the seminary of Pontlevoy, Loire-et- 
Cher, was the first to present and develop the 
problem of the eoliths in 1863. He discovered 
near Thenay in fresh-water deposits of the 
Upper Oligocene a great quantity of “‘flints 
shaped by human agency”’; on these grounds 
he supported the idea of human beings already 
living during the Age of Mammals pursuing 
an industry in stone implements that had at- 
tained considerable development, and already 
acquainted with the use of fire. The Abbé 
Delaunay collaborated with him in these re- 
searches. 

The Abbé Ducrost, in collaboration with 
Doctor Lartet, published in 1872 in the Ar- 
chives du Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de Lyon 
the results of the excavations of the station of 


200 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Solutré, in which he had participated with the 
discoverer of the site, Doctor Adrien Arcelin, 
and H. de Ferry. The Abbé Ducrost contin- 
ued these investigations up to his death. A 
sensational discovery which he considered of 
greatest importance was “a sepulture sur- 
rounded by great blocks of stone arranged in 
a sort of large oval, in the middle of which 
was a human skeleton with typical Solutrean 
leaf-points, a figurine (reindeer) carved in 
soft stone, fossilized reindeer bones, etc.” 
This sepulture, discovered and reported by 
the abbé in 1868, and considered by him to 
be dated beyond question, has unfortunately 
been lost trace of. 

The great explorations of the Prince of 
Monaco at the Grottes de Grimaldi were car- 
ried out by Doctor Marcelin Boule, Professor 
Emile Cartailhac, Doctor René Verneau, and 
the Chanoine de Villeneuve, and the results 
were published in 1906. At this site were 
found the remains of at least seventeen in- 
dividuals and a number of human sepultures 
which were associated with implements of 
Aurignacian type. 


IN EDUCATION 201 


It required the codperation of three en- 
lightened French priests to reéstablish and 
complete our knowledge of the Neanderthal 
race, namely, the two brothers, the Abbé A. 
Bouyssonie and the Abbé J. Bouyssonie, and 
their friend, the Abbé Bardon. These three 
friends discovered on August 3, 1908, in the 
small low cave of La Bouffis Bonneval, near 
La Chapelle-aux-Saints, the most perfect 
skeleton known of the neanderthaloid race, 
excavating it from an undisturbed deposit 
containing Mousterian flint implements, shells, 
and remains of woolly rhinoceros, horse, rein- 
deer, and bison. In the published account of 
their discovery they attributed the human 
skeleton to the Neanderthal race, which judg- 
ment was later confirmed by Doctor Marcelin 
Boule after exhaustive study of the specimen. 

Padre Lorenzo Sierra is a distinguished 
Spanish archeologist, noted for his discoveries 
of Paleolithic caves in the Cantabrian Moun- 
tains of northern Spain. 

We now reach the names of the two most 
distinguished men to-day in the prehistoric 
archeology of Europe, the Abbé Henri Breuil, 


202 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


assistant director of the great Institut de 
Paléontologie Humaine in Paris, and the 
Abbé Hugo Obermaier, professor of human 
prehistory in the University of Madrid. To 
the former we chiefly owe the masterly vol- 
umes covering the industries, paintings, and 
sculptures of the Upper Palzeolithic period in 
France, culminating in the zenith of Magda- 
lenian art; to the latter we owe the most ex- 
tensive explorations in Spain and in France 
of the whole period of human occupation, 
which culminated in his volume, “‘El Hombre 
Fésil,”’ published in Madrid (second edition, 
1925) and translated by the Hispanic Society 
of America as “Fossil Man in Spain.” 

This brings us to the most recent phase of 
human prehistory, namely, tracing man back 
to his ancient home—not in Mesopotamia or 
near Mount Ararat, but in the high central 
plateaus of northern China and Mongolia. 
The first step in this direction was taken by 
Pére Licent, a Jesuit missionary, who dis- 
covered the flints of Ordos; the second step 
was taken by Pére Teilhard de Chardin, pro- 
fessor of geology in the Institut Catholique de 


IN EDUCATION 203 


Paris, who in 1923 discovered at sites in China 
and Mongolia human industrial remains, to- 
gether with fossilized bones of animals, many 
of which are extinct. 

The writer has had the privilege of personal 
association with several of these distinguished 
French archzeologists of the Catholic faith: 
with the Abbé Hugo Obermaier in an ever- 
memorable journey through the prehistoric 
monuments of northern Spain; with the Abbé 
Henri Breuil into the recesses of all the prin- 
cipal prehistoric caverns of France—the ar- 
cheeologist who begins his day in his abbé’s 
dress in religious devotions, and then dons his 
rude miner’s costume and lamp for descent 
into the often perilous recesses of the caverns. 


DISPERSAL AND BRANCHING OF THE 
HUMAN FAMILY 


The second great generalization following 
that of the almost unimaginable antiquity of 
the human family is that this family has 
spread from a possible centre in central Asia 
southward into southern Asia and the East 
Indies, westward into western Asia and Eu- 


204 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


rope, dividing into several distinct branches 
which more or less rapidly diverged from each 
other, which became more or less progressive 
- and intelligent according to the demands made 
upon them by their environment and _life- 
habits, and which consequently retained more 
or less of that extremely remote ancestral form 
which links man with the other primates. 
Apart from the theoretic existence of many 
human and prehuman branches arising in the 
struggle for existence in different parts of the 
vast region from the Island of Java in the 
southeast to the Island of Britain in the north- 
west, we have human and prehuman docu- 
ments which afford incontestable proofs of 
this branching and divergent nature of human 
origin. It is true that these documents are ex- 
tremely rare, but it is also true that they in 
each case consist of the very parts of the skele- 
ton which yield the most convincing testi- 
mony. Thus while the protruding eye-ridges 
of the Trinil man remind us of the beetling 
brows of certain of the anthropoid apes, the 
large and relatively well-developed brain tells 
a different story. 


IN EDUCATION 205 


So with the few relics of the Piltdown race: 
the very smooth, non-projecting forehead, the 
very thick bony walls of the skull, the rela- 
tively large and convoluted brain, testify to 
the power of speech and justify Smith Wood- 
ward’s appellation of “dawn man,” the Eng- 
lish equivalent of the Greek LKoanthropus. 
Whereas the Trinil race belongs indubitably 
at the base of the Age of Man, the Piltdown 
race constitutes a complete distant branch of 
the human family which occupied Britain 
either early in the Age of Man or during the 
close of the Age of Mammals. Thus it is pos- 
sible that the Piltdown race is of Tertiary Age, 
like the unknown race which fashioned the 
flint implements and made the fireplaces of 
Foxhall in Norfolk, England. The Foxhall 
race is thus far known only by its flint imple- 
ments and by its fireplaces, but these are suf- 
ficient absolutely to convince the leading an- 
thropologists of France, Breuil and Capitan, 
that Foxhall man is of Tertiary age, and that 
its minimum antiquity is more than 500,000 
years. 

To sum up as to the early branches of the 


206 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


human family: First, we know the exact age 
of the Trinil “dawn man” (a far more ap- 
propriate designation than “‘ape-man,” since 


AGE OF MAMMALS | AGE OF MAN | __LIVING RACES 


TRINIL} “OLD STONE AGE. CAUCASIAN 














CHINESE 


BOCENE 
OLIGOCENE 
MIOCENE 
Buocens 













Age of sre 

Dawn Man’ and 
farly Separation 
of the Human 





HOTTENTOT 











AUSTRALIAN 


GORILLA 







CHIMPANZEE 





EXISTING FACTS OF HUMAN ASCENT 


1, 2. Dawn stage of human prehistory. $8. First known walking stage, the 
erect Trinil race of Java. 4. Piltdown race of Sussex. 5, 6. The low-browed 
Heidelberg-Neanderthal race. 7 Cré-Magnon and related races of high intelli- 
gence. The races 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are scattered throughout the entire period of the Age 
of Man, conservatively estimated at 500,000 years. Altogether, upward of 136 
skulls and skeletons of the fossil men of this period are known. 


his supposed position intermediate between 
the apes and man has been disproved); we 
know much of his mental and physical make- 


IN EDUCATION 207 


up and that he belongs to an erect-walking 
race, not to a climbing arboreal race. Second, 
we know the mental caliber of the Piltdown 
man. Third, we known the habits and indus- 
tries of the Foxhall man, although as yet we 
do not know his brain structure. Fourth, 
next above this is the Cromer man, who fash- 
ioned giant flint implements along the British 
coast; he too is known only by his industries 
or works. Fifth, either contemporaneous with 
the Cromer man or somewhat less ancient is 
the Heidelberg race, known by the massive 
jaw, which shows a strong kinship to the jaws 
attributed to the members of the Neanderthal 
race. To the unenlightened these documents 
of Trinil, of Piltdown, of Foxhall, of Cromer, 
of Heidelberg, are sparse and undecipherable; 
to the expert who profits by 130 years of la- 
borious research of anatomists and geologists 


in France, Germany, England, Italy, and 


Spain, these documents tell a uniformly con- 
sistent story. 

Absolutely convincing is the new, volumi- 
nous evidence regarding the Neanderthal race, 
which dominated western Europe for a period 


sl ae ee iy * pene 


208 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


estimated as high as 200,000 years. In good 
preservation are seven skeletons of this race, 
male and female, found in cavern burials of 
Le Moustier, La Ferrassie, La Chapelle, La 
Quina, and Spy, which together afford com- 
plete knowledge of every part of the skeleton 
and of the massive brain; in less perfect pres- 
ervation are four skeletons of Neanderthal 
children from the cavern of La Ferrassie. 
Thus is this race known from eleven skeletons 
and from less complete remains of nineteen 
other individuals sufficiently characteristic to 
be identified positively as neanderthaloid— 
namely, a child’s jaw and teeth from Taubach; 
jaws and bones of eleven individuals of Kra- 
pina, Croatia; lower jaws from Sipka, Ma- 
larnaud, and La Naulette; an historic female 
skull from Gibraltar; the typical skull ‘and 
thigh-bone of Neanderthal which gave the. 
name to the race; a child’s skull from La 
Quina. There are also remains of at least 
eight individuals found at various sites in 
Britain, Spain, the Channel Islands, and 
France. Thus altogether our knowledge of the 
Neanderthal race depends upon the burials 


IN EDUCATION 209 


of no less than thirty-eight individuals, often 
in association with artifacts which are consis- 
tently of Mousterian or pre-Mousterian type. 
This highly characteristic flint industrial phase 
is the key to the existence of Mousterian and 
probably neanderthaloid man in the Ordos of 
northern China, as determined by Licent and 
Teilhard, and in Mongolia as determined still 
more recently through the brilliant discoveries 
of Roy Chapman Andrews and Nels C. Nelson 
of the American Museum. 

The next higher phase of human evolution 
belonging to the height of the last great glacial 
age and to the period of sudden retreat of the 
Scandinavian glacier is that contemporaneous 
with the Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magda- 
lenian industries or with the late or Upper 
Paleolithic age; in this phase we have fifty- 
two skeletons and portions of other skeletons 
representing about thirty individuals—eighty- 


_ two individuals altogether. Of these, forty- 


two skeletons belonged to Aurignacian time, 
including those of Cré-Magnon (which gives 
the name to the Cré-Magnon race), of Solu- 
tré, of Combe-Capelle, all in France; of Enz- 


210 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


heim in Germany; of Paviland, England; of 
Grimaldi, Italy; of Briinn and Predmost, 
Czechoslovakia; of Camargo and Castillo, 
Spain; of Ojcow, Poland; and of Podkumok, 
Russia; two skeletons belonged to Solutrean 
time, one from Laugerie-Haute in France, one _ 
from Neu-Essing in Germany; eight skeletons 
of Magdalenian time are included, six from 
France (Laugerie-Basse, La Madeleine, Cap- 
Blanc, Chancelade, Duruthy, Les Hoteaux), 
and two from Germany (Obercassel), besides 
remains of sixteen other individuals from Le 
Placard, Mas d’Azil and Grotte des Hommes, 
France, Castillo, Spain, and Balla, Hungary. 


WE CANNOT EXCOMMUNICATE OUR ANCESTORS 


Summing up these irrefutable facts, the 
case for human evolution rests upon direct 
and overwhelming evidence. The races of 
Foxhall and Cromer have left hundreds of 
humanly fashioned flints on the east coast of 
Britain; the erect Trinil race of Java and the 
large-brained Sussex race of Piltdown are re- 
vealed through four individuals; the great 
low-brained Heidelberg-Neanderthal race rests 


IN EDUCATION 211 


upon more than fifty individuals; the fine 
large-brained Cré-Magnon and related races 
include eighty-two individuals. 

We cannot excommunicate these primitive 
ancestors of ours; whether we will or no we 
are obliged to welcome them into the great 
human family. 















Ga 

ag wy el Teo 

i te be es by eh 
f im oF A te ; 
. rh Lk an a 

\s v 7) 


Unley ta MARGIT S 


Real! rn ‘wu 
eae a 






y a ‘a¢ 


ne a1, 





XI 


A NEW BASIS OF CREATIVE 
EVOLUTION 


This is a more or less speculative conclusion to the next 
previous chapter addressed to the students of Cornell Univer- 
sity. The discovery of creative evolution was made by the 
author not in the sphere of the mind or spirit of man, but in 
the sphere of the anatomy of lower orders of mammals. The 
very detailed evidence upon which this discovery rests is 
now being set forth in two voluminous works for scientific 
readers. In this chapter the efforts previously made by the 
Lamarckian and Darwinian schools to account for the orig 
of the higher mental and spiritual faculties of man are shown 
to be futile. Most interesting are the successive speculations 
by able advocates of the Lamarckian and Darwinian hy- 
potheses, especially of August Weismann. There is now 
strong scientific evidence, derived chiefly from paleontology, 
that we must revive the idea of creative origins. The new 
basis of creative evolution discovered in anatomy may be 
theoretically expanded to the creative evolution of our men- 
tal and spiritual faculties. 


ee a 


A NEW BASIS OF CREATIVE 
EVOLUTION 


The known and the unknown in human evolution — Crea- 
tive evolution a recent discovery — The Lamarck-Spencer 
theory of the origin of mind abandoned — Creative origin of 
mental and spiritual traits — Application of Weismann’s in- 
terpretation of Natural Selection — New traits arising in 
reaction to racial environment — Hypothesis of coincident 
selection — Creative origin of musical and artistic talent. 


N his presidential address before the Brit- 
ish Association in South Africa, the late 
Professor Bateson so strongly felt the lack of 
creative impulse in the word “evolution” that 
he startled the world by his speculation that 
all the higher qualities of animal life may have 
resided potentially in the archaic protoplasm 
of the single-celled amceba type. 

I do not for a moment share a speculation 
which Bateson himself threw out somewhat 
after the quixotic manner of Bernard Shaw’s 
utterances on evolution, but I do feel the in- 
herent weakness in the word “evolution,” 
which signifies to unroll or to unfold, like the 


unfolding of a book, and the need of the older 
215 


216 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


Sanskrit \/ kar, signifying to make or to create; 
not creatio ex nihilo in the one-time theologic 
sense of creation out of nothing, but in the 
sense of new forms, qualities, and potencies 
arising out of pre-existing material. 

This is why I am beginning to use the com- 
bined words, “‘creative evolution,’ and have p- 


recently offered a new definition, namely, that ao 
evolution is a continuous creation of life fitted +» ° 


to a continuously changing world. 


THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN IN 
HUMAN EVOLUTION 


In the lay mind the thought at once arises, 
“Why, this is nothing new; we long since be- 
came familiar with it through Bergson’s fa- 
mous work of 1907 bearing these very words 
for its title.”! But my honored friend, Henri 
Bergson, advances on the deductive basis of 
an internal vital impulse along lines of adapta- 
tion, whereas the new basis of creative evolu- 
tion begins inductively with the prolonged 
study of physical adaptations and ends in the 
interpretative generalization expressed in the 


1*T Evolution Créatrice,” Henri Bergson. 





IN EDUCATION 217 


words “‘creative evolution.”’ Bergson advanced 
from principles to facts; we should advance 
from facts to principles. 


CREATIVE EVOLUTION A RECENT DISCOVERY 


Indirect advantages of the fundamentalist 
attacks that have been made during the past 
decade upon the whole principle of the evolu- 
tion of man are the sharpening of our defi- 
nitions, intensification of our methods of 
research and broadening of our field of explo- 
ration. 

As to the sharpening of our definitions, we 
are more clearly separating what we know and 
what we do not know about human evolution. 
In the sphere of absolute knowledge and irre- 
futable evidence is the anatomical evolution 
of man. The very brilliancy of the advances 
along this line, especially during the past three 
decades, tends to illumine the fact that we 
have made relatively little progress along \ 
moral, intellectual and spiritual lines of human 
evolution and forces us to realize that the 
anatomical is, after all, the least human part 
of the whole process. 


218 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


The supreme qualities which substantiate 
the rank that Linnzeus accorded man as a 
primate are not his physical but his spiritual 
powers, and we are only on the threshold of »., _ 
understanding of the modes by which the/ ce |, 4 
spiritual powers of man arose, gained by what. > bs a 
we have gleaned of the fossil history of man’, ; 
himself and by comparison with the fossil his, f- 
tory of other mammals. | 

By a natural inversion of the evidence, our 
rapidly advancing anatomical knowledge cer- 
tainly helps us on the moral, intellectual, and 
spiritual side of the problem. If, for example, 
our anatomical knowledge should lend strong 
support to the Lamarckian principle of the 
physical progress of man through the trans- 
mission to offspring of adaptations acquired 
by the parents, this principle might help us to 
a readier explanation of the origins of moral, 
intellectual, and spiritual adaptations. In 
fact, the now broken and discredited crutches 
of the Lamarckian hypothesis were those on 
which were built up the speculations of the 
philosophers Locke, Herbert Spencer, and 
George Romanes, especially in the latter’s 





IN EDUCATION 219 


work on “The Origin of the Human Fac- 
ulty.” 


THE LAMARCK-SPENCER THEORY OF THE 
ORIGIN OF MIND ABANDONED 


The most eminent American Lamarckian 
was Edward Drinker Cope, palzeontologist 
and natural philosopher, who in 1890! sum- 
marized the origin and evolution of the human 
mind as follows: 


The experiential theory adopted by Locke as a 
statement of the history of the human mind has 
been shown by Herbert Spencer to be more cor- 
rectly an explanation of the development of the 
mind of animals in general, including that of man. 
On this hypothesis, while it is admitted that much 
may be acquired by each individual human mind 
by experience, it is asserted that more has been 
acquired by the race in general, and handed down 
to the existing generations by inheritance. It is 
further held that the elements of the mind of 
man were not acquired by him at all, but have 
been derived by him by inheritance from the pre- 
existent members of the animal kingdom from 
whom he is descended. It is the qualities which 
are thus inherited which appear to the student 


1“°The Evolution of Mind,” E. D. Cope, The American Naturalist, 
November, 1890. 


220 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


who is unacquainted with this explanation of 
their origin to be spontaneous, or “intuitive”’ to 
the human mind. Thus the so-called intuitions 
of man are shown to be the organized products of 
the experience of preceding generations. 


Perhaps no other anatomist or palzeontolo- 
gist has made a more broad and searching 
analysis of the Lamarckian hypothesis pro 
and con than the writer of the present article; 
this analysis has been based upon literally 
thousands of observations and measurements 
among fossil ancestral lines of mammals, not 
only of primitive and higher primates, but of 
four diverse and independently evolving kinds 
of mammals. 

Starting in 1888 on the evolution of the 
primates, after a few months the creative prin- 
ciple was observed; at the time the writer was 
under the strong Lamarckian reaction of Dar- 
win himself and the Lamarckian propaganda 
of Cope. Accordingly, these creative origins 
of new characters were attributed to what may 
be termed the “experiential hypotheses” of 
Lamarck, Spencer, and Cope. 

During the next two decades, however, 


IN EDUCATION 221 


every single observed fact bearing on La- 
marckism was severely examined, and the 
writer was compelled to abandon the “expe- 


riential hypothesis”’ entirely, not only as in- 
adequate but as contrary to the very principle’ 


of progressive adaptation which it was de- 
signed to explain. This is the negative con- 
clusion as to Lamarckism finally set forth in 
two great paleontological monographs, ency- 
clopzedic in size and scope, now going to 
press. 


CREATIVE ORIGIN OF MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL 
TRAITS 


Obvious is the application to the origin of 
mind of this newly demonstrated creative 
principle in the anatomy of the lower animals 
and in what we know of the anatomy of man. 
If useful anatomical characters arise without 
antecedent experience, why may not useful in- 
tellectual and spiritual characters also arise 
without antecedent experience? If the ex- 
periential hypothesis is a demonstrated failure 
in anatomy, why should it not also be proved 
a demonstrated failure in psychology and in 


222 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


the origin of our intellectual and spiritual 
traits ? 

But we must not advance from the physical 
to the psychical side of man too hurriedly; we 
must not too readily assume that the same 
creative principle prevails in mind as in mat- 
ter. Moreover, we are endeavoring to distin- 
guish between observed facts and mere hy- 
potheses and to begin entirely afresh, along 
lines of creative evolution, with open minds 
and without preconceptions. 


APPLICATION OF WEISMANN’S INTERPRETATION 
OF NATURAL SELECTION 


Favoring the possibility of a similar creative 
rather than experiential origin of spiritual and 
physical characters is one of the most impor- 
tant biological generalizations of the nine- 
teenth century, namely, Weismann’s princi- 
ple of “the continuity of the germ-plasm,” and 
the series of brilliant discoveries consequent 
upon this principle in the field of heredity up 
to the present moment. 

The very first corollary of Weismann’s prin- 
ciple is that all hereditary characters have a 


IN EDUCATION 223 


similar germinal basis throughout the entire 
animal and plant kingdoms; consequently, by 
all the accepted principles of heredity, the 
creative principle must be a phenomenon of 
heredity. Weismann’s application of natural 
selection to the higher mental faculties is cited 
below. 

Let us, however, first approach the crea- 
tive problem along an entirely different line, 
namely, along the line of observed facts of the 
intellectual and spiritual evolution of man 
during the prehistoric period beginning with 
the dawn man of Tertiary times and ending 
with those dramatic transitions in the intel- 
lectual life of man in which, entirely without 
antecedent experience, he suddenly emerges 
from Nature, like Minerva from the brain of 
Jove, fully equipped for supreme intellectual 
and spiritual tests. 

My own reflections along this line were first | 
aroused by the realization of the sudden emer- 
gence of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual — 
abilities of the Cré-Magnon race, perhaps 
40,000 years ago. An analogous instance is 
the emergence of the Achzean race of Greece 


224 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


from the so-called barbarians of the northern 
forests, a fair-haired race which in a few dec- 
ades revealed a moral and intellectual su- 
premacy not attained before or since. a 
Contemporary illustration of the same crea- 
tive principle is the linguistic, mathematical 
and artistic ability displayed by youth sud- 
denly transplanted from an uncivilized to a 
civilized, intellectual environment, entirely 
without corresponding antecedent experience. 


NEW TRAITS ARISING IN REACTION TO 
RACIAL ENVIRONMENT 


It is reflections such as these which led me 
to declare in the address before the students 
\ of Cornell University that the spiritual quali- 
ties of man cannot be accounted for by purely 
evolutionary processes, and that mathematical 
_and artistic faculties of man may be cited as 
new attributes of the human race, without 
antecedence in experience, and not to be ac- 
counted for by evolution, in the accepted sense 
of the term. 

We accordingly observe that there is an 
actual parallel between the intellectual and 


IN EDUCATION 225 


the physical evolution of man, namely, that 
in both alike certain characters and qualities 
arise antecedent to experience. Yet both in 
mind and in body of man these creative char- 
acters adjust themselves to experience; they 
are adaptive; they fit the environment; they 
afford adaptive reactions to existing states. 
Consequently, they cannot be due to a blindly 
creative impulse, such as the “élan vital’’ of 
Bergson, impelling mind and matter into at- 
tributes and forms which could be of no pos- 
sible service because unfitted either to the 
psychical or the physical environment. 

An illustration of this universal quality of 
fitness to new conditions may be taken from 
the consideration of the racial evolution of 
man. I touched on this in my study of the 
life of John Burroughs,’ from which I may 


quote a few passages: 


Whence the poet’s soul, whence the soul of a 
race, of a people, of a nation? Have we not rea- 
son to believe that there is a racial soul as well 
as a racial mind, a racial system of morals, a 
racial anatomy? ‘This is the thought to which I 


1“*The Racial Soul of John Burroughs,” H. F. Osborn. 


226 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


have been led in trying to penetrate to the inner 
meaning of the life and works of John Burroughs, 
because, eager as I am about anatomy, I am far 
more eager about the origin and development of 
the moral, spiritual, and intellectual nature of man 
—the mystery of mysteries in biclogy at the 
present time. ... 

Our conclusion is that distinctive spiritual and 
intellectual powers originate along lines of slow 
racial evolution in climate and surroundings of 
distinct kinds. In the South were the Mediter- 
ranean lines of migration along sunny seas, for- 
midable enough in the winter season, favorable to 
rapid development of maritime powers, together 
with artistic powers—the Mycenzans, the Phoeni- 
cians, the early Italian races. The Mediterraneans 
take nature for granted. 

In the centre of Europe were the lines of Al- 
pine or Celtic invaders, kept entirely away from 
the sea, races of agriculturalists and of miners, 
rich in mechanical talent, neither adventurous 
nor sea-loving. To the north lived a race of hunt- 
ers, of seafaring adventurers, resolutely contend- 
ing with the forces of nature, fond of the open, 
curious and inquisitive about the causes of things; 
deliberate in spiritual development, very gradu- 
ally they reach the greatest intellectual heights 
and depths. ... 

It is through the reciprocal relation of the inner 
man and the environing world that there are so 
few misfits. If Bergson were right, our western 





IN EDUCATION 227 


world would be full of disharmonies; we should 
find Mediterranean geniuses springing up in 
Scandinavian atmospheres, as is never the case. 
The racial creative spirit of man always reacts to 
its own historic racial environment, into the re- 
mote past. . . . If Bergson were right, we should 
have spiritual and intellectual genius appearing 
out of season and entirely out of accord with en- 
vironment. ... Racial aptitudes of the past 
20,000 years are now revealed in anatomy and 
will be no less clearly revealed in the predisposi- 
tions of morals, of intellect, and of spirit. 


Thus we observe a creative rise of intellec- 
tual and spiritual characters of which we have 
no explanation whatever, and side by side with 
this we place the creative rise of new anatom- 
ical characters which are equally difficult to 
explain. The scientific attitude is to deter- 
mine whether this creative element in mental 
evolution is a fact, a principle so universal that 
it may be called a law. After this point is 
once settled we may search for explanations. 


HYPOTHESIS OF COINCIDENT OR ORGANIC 
SELECTION 
Meanwhile, the only tentative explanation 
we can offer as a substitute for the “‘experien- 


228 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


tial theory” is one which was many years ago 
proposed simultaneously by the human psy- 
chologist, James Mark Baldwin, the compara- 
tive psychologist and philosopher, C. Lloyd 
Morgan, and the present writer. Baldwin 
used the term “‘organic selection”’ and Mor- 
gan used the term “coincident selection”’ 
with the same significance. Morgan summed 
up his present views regarding mind in his 
Gifford Lecture of 1922, entitled “‘ Emergent 
Evolution,’ + a metaphysical rather than 
physical or experimental treatise, in which 
he does not allude to “coincident selection.” 
Baldwin has not, to our knowledge, applied 
the principle of “organic selection” to the 
development of the racial mind, which, like 
the racial body, is eminently adapted to exist- 
ing conditions of thought and of life. 

In 1896 the writer independently suggested 
‘a mode of evolution requiring neither natu- 
ral selection nor the inheritance of acquired 
characters.” This is a hypothesis of prolonged 
or secular inheritance of mental and physical 
predispositions which happen to coincide with 


1“Emergent Evolution,” C. Lloyd Morgan. 


IN EDUCATION 229 


the new demands and habits of life. By this 
means the individual choice of habit and of 
habitat, with men as with animals, has been 
the very pole star of evolution. 

This. choice of habit or of habitat has some- 
times been optional, a matter of pleasure in 
choosing between two or more alternatives, 
and sometimes enforced. New habitats also 
throw all the adaptations to old habitats and 
habits out of balance and place new mental 
and physical predispositions at a premium. 
This Osborn-Baldwin-Morgan process of “or- 
ganic” or “coincident” adaptation to new 
mental and physical conditions operates over 
very long periods of time. Every race of mam- 
mal and man thus becomes in a sense creator 
of its destiny, the architect of its fate. 

Take a purely anatomical illustration of 
organic or coincident selection: By heredity 
men may be predisposed to arboreal, to cur- 
sorial, to terrestrial, or to amphibious life. The 
born climbers take to the trees, the born swim- 
mers take to the water, the born runners take 
to the chase. But in turn these very habits of 
tree life, of aquatic life, of cursorial or running 


230 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


life, through the process of individual modifi- 
cation and self-adaptation, are self-perfecting. | 

Those who attain the greatest skill and fa- 
cility are naturally the most successful mem- 
bers of the tribe. They are the best climbers, 
the best fishermen, the best hunters. They 
are rewarded with the first choice of wives and 
blessed with the first crop of offspring. This 
is the essence of the principle of organic selec- 
tion, a subsidiary principle of natural selection. 

The illustration I used in 1896 was the fol- 
lowing: If a human infant were brought up 
in the branches of a tree for arboreal instead 
of for terrestrial life, there is no doubt that all 
predispositions toward arboreal habit would 
be retained and cultivated; thus a profoundly 
different adult type would be produced. . . . 
During an enormously long period of time in 
which a race might select an arboreal habitat, 
such as that selected by the anthropoid apes, 
it would be possible to accumulate all physical 
and mental predispositions which favor ar- 
boreal life. 


IN EDUCATION 231 


CREATIVE ORIGIN OF MUSICAL AND ARTISTIC 
TALENT 


Weismann very cleverly applied natural 
selection to the higher mental faculties in 


the second of his famous essays on heredity 
(1883):: 


The sudden and yet wide-spread appearance of 
a particular talent in correspondence with the 
general intellectual excitement of a certain epoch 
points in the same direction. How many poets 
arose in Germany during the period of sentiment 
which marked the close of the last century, and 
how completely all poetic gifts seem to have dis- 
appeared during the Thirty Years’ War! How 
numerous were the philosophers that appeared in 
the epoch which succeeded Kant; while all philo- 
sophic talent seemed to have deserted the German 
nation during the sway of the antagonistic “‘exact 
science,” with its contempt for speculation. 


Wherever academies are founded, there the 
Schwanthalers, Defreggers and Lenbachs emerge 
from the masses which had shown no sign of artis- 
tic endowment through long periods of time. At 
the present day there are many men of science 
who, had they lived at the time of Biirger, Uhland 
or Schelling, would probably have been poets or 
philosophers. And the man of science also cannot 


1 “Essays on Heredity,’”’ August Weismann. 


232 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 


dispense with that mental disposition directed in 
a certain course, which we call talent, although 
the specific part of it may not be so obvious; we 
may, indeed, go further, and maintain that the 
physicist and the chemist are characterized by a 
combination of mental dispositions which differ 
from those of the botanist and the zoologist. 
Nevertheless, a man is not born a physicist or a 
botanist, and in most cases chance alone deter- 
mines whether his endowments are developed in 
either direction. 


Helpful as are Weismann’s examples of the 
favoring by selection of musical and scien- 
tific talents, neither of his explanations really 
touches the core of the matter of origin, which 
lies in this newly discovered principle of crea- 
tive evolution. Once a certain talent orig- 
inates in man or beast, no one questions the 
accumulation and strengthening of this talent 
by Natural Selection; it is the origin of the 
talent which remains to be accounted for. 
This is why we must search in the new field 
of creative evolution for the origin of the 
higher mental faculties of man. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The following are selected as among the outstanding ad- 
dresses, essays, and books which appeared in the course of 
the fundamentalist controversy from 1922 to 1926. Included 
also are some of the older writings to which the reader may 
desire to refer for the further history of religious thought on 
evolution, such as Moore’s “Science and the Faith,” and 
Osborn’s “From the Greeks to Darwin.” . 


GENERAL REFERENCES 


NATURAL THEOLOGY, OR EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTENCE AND 
ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY COLLECTED FROM THE APPEAR- 
ANCES OF NATURE, William Paley, 1802. Citation from 
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, ELEVENTH EDITION, vol. XX, 
p. 629. 

SCIENCE AND THE FAITH, Aubrey L. Moore. Kegan Paul, 
Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd., London, 1892. 

FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN, H. F. Osborn, 1913. Charles 
Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1923. 

GOD AND EVOLUTION, William Jennings Bryan. The New 
York Times, February 26, 1922. 

MR. BRYAN SPEAKS TO DARWIN, William Jennings Bryan. 
The Forum, July, 1925. 

EVOLUTIONARY FAITH AND MODERN DouBTs, William Bateson. 
Address before American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Toronto, Canada, December 28, 1921. 

THE EARTH SPEAKS TO BRYAN, Henry Fairfield Osborn. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1925. 

THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION, Louis Trenchard More. Princeton 
University Press, 1925. 

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, C. Lloyd Morgan. Mac- 
millan & Company, Ltd., London, 1905. 

233 


234 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I BELIEVE IN GOD AND IN EVOLUTION, W. W. Keen. J. B. Lip- 
pincott Company, Philadelphia, 1922. 

A GRAMMAR OF BELIEF, Charles Lemuel Dibble. Morehouse 
Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1922. 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION, J. Arthur Thomson. Charles Scrib- 
ner’s Sons, New York, 1925. 

THE SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, James Y. Simp- 
son. Hodder & Stoughton, London and New York, 1912. 

THE MAKING OF RELIGION, Andrew Lang. Longmans, Green 
& Company, New York and London, 1909. 

SCIENCE AND LIFE, R. A. Millikan. The Pilgrim Press, Boston, 
Chicago, 1924. 

NATURAL SELECTION, John Burroughs. THE WRITINGS OF JOHN 
BURROUGHS, Riverby Edition, vol. XIX, Houghton Mif- 
flin Company, 1916. 

LANDMARKS IN THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELI- 
GION, James Y. Simpson. George H. Doran Company, 
New York, 1926. 


CHAPTER I—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


NATURE: APHORISMS BY GOETHE, T. H. Huxley. Nature, vol. I, 
no. 1, November 4, 1869. Translation of Goethe’s DIEz 
NATUR (1783). 

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. A STUDY IN HUMAN 
NATURE, William James. Being the Gifford Lectures on 
Natural Religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. 
Longmans, Green & Company, New York, 1911. 

THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT, C. Bascom Slemp; pp. 257, 258, 
802, 303. Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, 
N. Y., 1926. 

SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, Alfred North Whitehead; 
pp. 260, 262, 265, 270, 273, 275, 276. The Macmillan 
Company, New York, 1926. , 


CHAPTER TI—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY 
MAY DO, Thomas H. Huxley. couLecrep xssays, vol. ITI, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 


pp. 396, 397. Macmillan & Company, Ltd., London, 
1895. 

HOW TO TEACH RELIGION IN THE SCHOOLS, H. F. Osborn, School 
and Society, January 9, 1926. 

PUT RELIGION BACK INTO THE SCHOOLS, H. F. Osborn. Chris- 
tian Work, February 27, 1925. 


CHAPTER IV—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


HUMAN NATURE AND ConpDUwcT, John Dewey; pp. 94, 138, also 
12, 13. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1922. 

AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY, William McDougall; pp. 12, 13. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1924. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RADIUM, Robert A. Millikan. Science, 
N.5S., vol. 54, no. 1383, July 1, 1921. 

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW IDEALISM, Rudolf Eucken. Harper 
and Brothers, New York, 1909. 

WAS WIRD WERDEN, Walter Rathenau. 1921. 

THE UNITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. Report of Cardiff 
meeting of British Association of 1920. Nature, Septem- 
ber 2, 1920. 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. Editorial report of Conference of 
Modern Churchmen at Oxford. Nature, September 18, 
1924. 

EMERGENT EVOLUTION, C. Lloyd Morgan; pp. 33, 89, 226, 229, 
276, 297-299. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 
1923. 

BIOLOGY AND RELIGION, J. S. Haldane. 

JOINT STATEMENT UPON THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RE- 
LIGION. Released to the press of the United States, May 
26, 1923. 


CHAPTER V—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


DARWINISM AND CATHOLIC THOUGHT, Canon H. de Dorlodot; 
p. 177. Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, Chi- 
cago, 1922. 


236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


PROMETHEUS BOUND, /Eschylus. Translated by Robert White- 
law. Oxford University Press, London and New York, 
1907. 


CHAPTER VI—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


THE TENNESSEE EVOLUTION CASE, Robert 8. Keebler. Paper 
before Tennessee Bar Association, Memphis, Tenn., June 
26-27, 1925. 

STATEMENT OF FACTS, ASSIGNMENT OF ERRORS, BRIEF AND 
ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF JOHN THOMAS SCOPES, PLAIN- 
TIFF-IN-ERROR, VS. STATE OF TENNESSEE, DEFENDANT- 
IN-ERROR, Attorneys Neal, Darrow, Malone, Spurlock, 
McElwee, Keebler, Rosensohn, Pollak, Hays. 


CHAPTER XI—SPECIAL REFERENCES 


THE EVOLUTION OF MIND, Edward D. Cope. American Nait- 
uralist, p. 1009; November, 1890. 

ESSAYS ON HEREDITY, no. IT, 1863, August Weismann. Trans- 
lated by Shipley. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1889. 

THE RACIAL SOUL OF JOHN BURROUGHS, Henry Fairfield Os- 
born. Address at Burroughs Memorial meeting of Ameri- 
can Academy of Arts and Letters, November 18, 1921. 
Included as tenth Impression in IMPRESSIONS OF GREAT 
NATURALISTS, Henry Fairfield Osborn; pp. 194, 196-198. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1924. 

A MODE OF EVOLUTION REQUIRING NEITHER NATURAL SELEC- 
TION NOR THE INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS, 
Henry Fairfield Osborn. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., vol. 
15, pp. 141-142, 148. 


INDEX 


Andersson, J. M., discoveries in 
China, 108. 

Andrews, Roy Chapman, 110, 209. 

Arcelin, Dr. Adrien, 200. 


Baldwin, James, organic selection, 
228. 

Bardon, Abbé, discoveries at Cha- 
pelle-aux-Saints, 194, 201. 

Barnes, 79. 

Bateson, William, evolution, 3; 
higher qualities in protoplasm, 
215; 

Bergson, creative evolution, 48, 
82, 84; élan vital, 225. 

Boule, Marcelin, 150; identified 
Neanderthal skeleton, 201. 

Bourgeois, Abbé Louis, problem of 
eoliths, 199. 

Bouyssonie, Abbé J., discoveries at 
Chapelle-aux-Saints, 194, 201. 
Breuil, Henri, supported Foxhall 
discoveries, 144; work on Upper 

Paleolithic period, 201. 

Bryan, William Jennings, “‘God 
and Evolution,” 3; two aspects 
of ideas, 30; evolution has no 
support in the Bible, 35; evolu- 
tion and American spiritual 
movement, 87; Scopes case, 117; 
evolution inimical to religion 
and morals, 128; vs. Osborn, 
agreements and disagreements, 
129; ‘‘ape-theory”’ fiction, 142. 

Buffon, opposed dogma of sudden 
creation, 139. 

Burroughs, John, 28-9; 
traits, 225. 


racial 


Capitan, Louis, supported Foxhall 
discoveries, 144, 205. 

Cartailhac, Emile, 200. 

Cattell, James McKeen, soul and 
psychology, 74, 75. 

Chapelle-aux-Saints, 194, 201. 

Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, palzeo- 
lithic man in northern China, 
107, 202, 209. 

Coincident selection, Morgan, 228. 
See also organic selection. 

Conduct, vs. evolution, 62; press, 
63; teleological revival empha- 
sizes spiritual basis, 73; Dewey 
on ethics, 78; Harnack, failure 
of science, 80. 

Continuity of germ-plasm, Weis- 
mann, 222. 

Coolidge, Calvin, 20, 21. 
Cope, Edward Drinker, origin and 
evolution of human mind, 219. 
Cradle of human race, Hrdlicka, 
108, northern China and Mon- 
golia, 107, 109. 

Creative evolution, process, 120, 
216; recent discoveries, 217. 

Cré-Magnon man, discoveries, 41, 
52-3, 126, 146; sudden emer- 
gence of powers, 223. 

Cromer flint relics, 210. 


Darwin, importance in world of 
thought, 9; theories rested on 
circumstantial evidence, 33, 41; 
Kingsley, 32; present value, 58; 
skull of Neanderthal man, 150; 
in schools, 162-3. 

Delaunay, Abbé, 199. 


237 


238 


Descartes, 71. 

Design, argument for, Paley, 13, 
61; Goethe, 15; Job, 16. 

Dewey, on the soul, 73; desira- 
bility of natural basis for ethics, 


78. 

Dorlodot, H. de, 97. 

Dubois, Eugen, discovery of Trinil 
race, 147-8, 196. 

Ducrost, Abbé, investigations at 
Solutré, 199, 200. 


Education, needs of schools, 156; 
“opinion” and “‘truth”’ in edu- 
cation, 161; difficulty involved 
in teaching of evolution, 162; 
necessity for religious teachings 
in public schools, 181. 

Emergent evolution, Morgan, con- 
tinuous purposive principle, 82. 

Ethics. See Conduct. 

Eucken, Rudolf, need for new form 
of Christianity, 77. 

Evolution, Bateson, 3; and revolu- 
tion, 7; natural selection one 
cause of, 29; continuous fitness 
for environment, 29; evolution- 
ary truth an observational mat- 
ter, 30; McCosh, 31; unsupport- 
ed in Bible, Bryan, 35; St. Au- 
gustine, 36; viewed as enemy of 
religion and cause of decadence, 
45; moral and spiritual value, 48; 
definition, 48; creative evolution, 
physical and mental, 49, 53; 
effect on conduct, 62; legislation 
against, 96 (see also Scopes 
trial); Dorlodot, 97; evidence 
points to continuous ascent, 120; 
definition, 160 (note); moral les- 
sons, 164; inspiration of object in 
teaching, 165; teaching advanced 
students, 165; nature-study, 
169; teaching of evolution, 170, 
171; creative element in mental 
evolution, 225, 227. 


INDEX 


Experiential hypothesis, 219, 220; 
abandoned, 221; substitute, 228. 


Ferry, H. de, 200. 

Foxhall man, discovery of, 39, 40, 
143-4, 146, 205; age, 207. 

Fundamentalism, 4; attacks on 
evolutionists, 45-6; Scopes case, 
156-7. See also Bryan, literal- 
ism, Scopes trial. 


Goethe, nature, 15. 


Haeckel, Ernst, chief proponent of 
Darwinism in Europe, 58; an- 
thropoid apes, 141; ‘‘Anthropo- 
genie,” 163. 

Haldane, J. S., mechanistic theory 
untenable, 85; religion and con- 
duct, 86. 

Harnack, 80.. 

Heidelberg man, 41, 207; fossil 
evidence, 149, 210. 

Hesperopithecus tooth, discovery, 
103; significance, 105. 

Hominide, distinct family, 136, 
189; new fossil discoveries of Pli- 
ocene age, 143. 

Hrdlicka, Dr. Ales, considered 
Europe the cradle of human race, 
108. 

Huxley, tribute to the Bible, 57; 
influence on conduct, 58; did not 
accept survival-of-fittest theory 
as adequate, 59; on Paley’s Evi- 
dences, 61; influence on Morgan, 
81; skull of Neanderthal man, 
150. 


James, William, religion an inter- 
course with higher powers, 17. 
Job, conception of Design, 16; 
relation of God and nature to 
man, 98-102. 

“Joint Statement upon Relations 
of Science and Religion,” 87. 


INDEX 


Kingsley, Charles, on Darwin, 


31-2. 


Lamarck, hypothesis of use and 
disuse, 53; transmission of ac- 
quired characters, 218; Cope, 
219; Lamarckian hypothesis in- 
adequate, 221. 

Lartet, 199. 

Licent, Pére Emile, discoveries in 
Mongolia, 107, 202, 209. 

Linnaeus, 50, 218. 

Literalism, of Cromwell and the 
Puritans, 8; revival, 11. See 
also Fundamentalism. 

Locke, experiential hypothesis, 
219. 


Man, discoveries at Foxhall, 39- 
40; foundations of moral nature, 
50; genesis of intellectual pow- 
ers, Lamarck, Spencer, 53; Cré- 
Magnon, 51-2; prehistory, Chi- 
na, 107; Hrdlicka, 108; Anders- 
son’s discoveries, 108; spiritual 
life and early religious practices, 
111; primates, 121-2; fossil evi- 
dence for ascent, 124; age, 189; 
Hominide, 189; dispersal, 190, 
203; importance of fossil evi- 
dence, 192, 204, 210; early 
branches, 205-10. 

Maithew, W. D., 109, 151. 

McCosh, 31. 

McDougall, faculty psychology, 
74 


McGregor, 197. 

Mechanism, revival of material- 
ism, Haeckel, Descartes, 71; 
Spencer, 72; Haldane, 85. 

Millikan, importance of spiritual 
values, 76. 

Moir, J. Reid (see also Foxhall 
man), 143, 149. 

Morgan, C. Lloyd, emergent evolu- 


239 


tion, 82-4; coincident selection, 
228. 


Natural selection, only cause of 
evolution yet discovered, 29; 
Burroughs, 29; Weismann, 223, 
231-2. See also organic selection. 

Naturalism. See Mechanism. 

Neanderthal man, 41; ancient 
lower order of hunters, 51; antig- 
uity and description, 127; 
Hominide, 136; Heidelberg, 146; 
in Dordogne, 150; scientists 
doubted discovery, 194; skeleton 
evidence, 208. 


Obermaier, Abbé Hugo, work in 
Spain and France, 202. 

Organic selection, predispositions 
coinciding with environment, 
228; Baldwin, 228. 

Origin of species, Waagen, continu- 
ous ordered process, 38. 


Paley, William, special creation, 
12, 13; conception of religion, 17; 
teleological argument for De- 
sign, 61; “‘Evidences”’ still valu- 
able, 62. 

Pascal, 17. 

Piltdown man, 41, 125; age and 
characteristics, 146, 205; tardy 
recognition, Woodward, 148, 
195; skeleton evidence, 210. 

Press, influence, 63, 183-5. 

Primates, Linnaeus, 50, 121; di- 
verging ancestry of man, 122. 

Puritanism. See Literalism. 


Racial traits, environment, 224; 
adaptivity, 225; Burroughs, 225. 

Rappelyea, George, 5. 

Rapprochement between religion 
and science, 77; Rathenau, 77- 
8; Barnes, 79. 

Rathenau, Walter, plea for spirit- 
ual revival, 20; soul, 77. 


240 


Religion, revival, 11; definition by 
a naturalist, 15; as factor in evo- 
lution, 17; conception of, Pascal, 
Paley, Schleiermacher, 17; pro- 
pitiation, James, 17; relation to 
science, Whitehead, 18; value, 
Coolidge, 20; Millikan, 76; con- 
duct, Haldane, 86; growth of, 
111; failure, 177; in schools, 181; 
historic elements, Jewish, 181, 
Christian, 182; French clergy in 
evolutionary work, 198; Lin- 
naeus, 50, 218. 


Saint Augustine, 36. 

Schleiermacher, 17. 

Science, relation to religion, White- 
head, 18; inadequate to control 
future, 178; Russian experi- 
ment, 179. 

Scopes trial, fundamentalism men- 
ace to education, 4, 5, 117-19; 
“‘monkey trial,” 135; revelation 
of ignorance, 156. 

Sierra, Padre Lorenzo, paleolithic 
caves in northern Spain, 201. 
Simiidz, separate from Homini- 
deze, 136; specialized for arboreal 

life, 141. 

Soul, Dewey, 73; McDougall, 74; 
Cattell, 75; rediscovered, 76-78; 
existence of, 180. See also Re- 
ligion. 

Special creation, Paley, 12. 

Spencer, 72; Lamarck-Spencer hy- 


INDEX 


pothesis of use and disuse, 53, 
218; system now disregarded, 
58; on Locke’s_ experiential 
theory, 219. 

Survival of fittest, Huxley, 59. 


Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 
paleolithic man in Northern 
China, 107, 202, 209. 

Teleology, abandoned in _nine- 
teenth century, 71; new forms, 
72. 

Testut, 136. 

Theism, in Psalms and Job, 99. 

Trinil man, discovery, 146-8; sci- 
entific incredulity, 196; Mc- 
Gregor, 197; anatomy, 204; at 
base of Age of Man, 205; age and 
characteristics known, 206. 


Verneau, René, 200. 
Villeneuve, Chanoine de, 200. 
Vitalism, revival, 91. 


Waagen, origin of species through 
ordered process, 38. 

Weismann, continuity of germ- 
plasm, 222; applied natural se- 
lection to higher faculties, 223, 
231-2. 

Whitehead, Alfred North, science 
and religion, 18. 

Woodward, Arthur Smith, dis- 
covery of Piltdown man, 148, 
195. 


‘ SON 
ie ko tan | 
1 net aN 


oT Age 


\ ORY. oar 
Shad si Me unr 


ya 
oad 
lens 


fae 


ah A eee 
es Pyles 
esas 
‘ Nes 
$307) Whe 2 
¥ pei mart | 


sty 


icy 
Bis Lae i j Hs i 


2 By Rn Oi. mah 
Are 


Viet 
Red ta: Wg 


Las. Ae 
i Al (Qt easy) 


maar Sul ‘a chin rm Pry t2- aD | 


URS ae at ls 


2 


75 2 y 
ik re “i 


at eek acl ihe = ‘ae 
Tied ee 4 Peat x AR > 





Date Due 
F 26 4y 


Ee 


La 
—_ 
ral 


cee eee 2) 


Bie re 


Cadet onset eA 
AorReL Ty heabehs ch 34 SOR oa 


iar 
: ee e 


ad " a, 





Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 


WO NOU 


1 1012 01007 6596 








